Former Alaskan Governor, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, and Miss Wasilla Pageant winner Sarah Palin recently weighed in on the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Private citizen Ms. Palin turned to her page on the universally-respected Facebook with this comment: <screen capture> "We had been told there were no "death panels" in the bill either. But look closely at the provision mandating bureaucratic panels that will be calling the shots regarding who will receive government health care."

Republicans such as Ms. Palin are doing their best to defeat this Act by keeping the scary idea of 'death panels' alive in the public eye. They want the American people to know that passage of the Act will lead to faceless bureaucrats assembling in black robes in an underground bunker to decide who lives and who dies.     

And, really, they're the best people to do it. They know what they're talking about.

Because it was the Grand Poobah of Republicans himself, then-Texas governor George W Bush, who signed into law the Texas Futile Care Act in 1999, giving hospital administrators the power to disconnect patients from life-support if it is decided continuing treatment is, <ahem> futile. But the big Care Bears who wrote that bill left an open door for these sicko patients: family or guardians have a whopping ten days to find another place to take them, before the plug is pulled. And where are they supposed to go? The words 'empty parking lot' and 'behind Big Joe's BBQ Ribs House' spring to mind. Because, really, who's going to take a patient the hospital 'death panels' don't want?   

Equally important, why should Americans take seriously the online ramblings of a former politician that 66 million of them didn't want?