NO, SERIOUSLY: DID PALIN RESIGN SPECIFICALLY SO SHE COULD BE A FREELANCE HEALTH-CARE HITWOMAN?

I said a couple of days ago that the reason, or at least one reason, Sarah Palin resigned just might have been because someone thought it would be useful to have her available full-time as a non-office-holding, high-profile delivery system for the wildest, most scurrilous GOP talking points. Now, fresh off her "death panels" victory, she's at it again:

Palin goes on attack after Emanuel's 'Complete Lives System'

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) praised a Senate committee's decision to drop an end-of-life provision from its healthcare reform bill, but continued to pound away at the overall bill -- especially a proposal by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel....

Palin alleged that Emanuel, a White House healthcare adviser and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, would advocate a "Complete Lives System," which "if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential."

President Obama's silence on the Complete Lives System is troubling, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate asserted, and called on the president to answer questions about the theory.

"Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the 'Complete Lives System'?" Palin asked. "If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on?" ...

That's from The Hill; the article cites this Facebook post from Palin:

...The rationing system proposed by one of President Obama's key health care advisors is particularly disturbing. I'm speaking of the "Complete Lives System" advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president's chief of staff. President Obama has not yet stated any opposition to the "Complete Lives System," a system which, if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential. Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the "Complete Lives System"? If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on? ...

(Emphasis in original.)

Now, the righties have been hammering away at Emanuel for a while; the latest hit is this Washington Times article, which Palin cites.

But it doesn't mention the "Complete Lives System" by name. Palin got that from some other source.

So I'll throw out this theory: she's being deployed -- I don't know who the deployer is or what exactly is in it for her -- to make these memes more visible. Potentially, she can make "Complete Lives System" a scary, evil-sounding household phrase.

And what is the "Complete Lives System"? Well, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with medicine practiced under ordinary circumstances, and as far as I know -- despite what The Hill says -- it doesn't have a damn thing to do with any of the health-care bills. You can read about it in the abstract to this article, of which Emanuel was a co-author (emphasis mine):

Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system -- the complete lives system -- which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles.

Got it? This is about allocating stuff we don't have enough of -- organs for transplant, or those vaccines that happen to be in short supply. It is not about introducing general rationing for the hell of it, or out of some Nazi principle.

But I think somebody told Palin to get the phrase into the mix. I think this is her job now. Maybe she didn't resign with doing this as a near-term plan -- but I have my suspicions.

*****

By the way, do you know who else is deeply focused on the "Complete Lives System"? Lyndon LaRouche. Check out this July 30 posting at larouchepac.com. Same message as Sarah's. Weren't the righties denying a couple of days ago that LaRouche is one of theirs? On health care, rhetorically speaking, LaRouche is the
ultimate teabagger.