Of course Sarah Palin is absolutely correct in pointing out that "Death Panels" would play a significant role in ObamaCare.

Democrats refuse to accept that reference but 1) When the budgeted allocation is about to be used up and 2) ten patients are waiting for expensive surgery 3) someone will have to decide just which patients get the surgery and live and 4) "all the rest".

There's no mention anywhere of what happens in this scenario because it has been purposely avoided by the authors of the bill presently in Congress. The fact is, a panel of people will decide who lives and who dies.

"a rose by any other name"...

All you need to know about rationing (in a government-run system) can be found in a quick 'net search for "UK NICE ration".

Rep Weiner (D-NY) was refreshingly honest about this.

There will be no rationing. What they are going to be doing is REDISTRIBUTING health care, as they are redistributing every other erstwhile perquisite of citizenship and a lifetime of hard work. The lucky seniors will die fairly young of something that isn't too painful. The unlucky ones won't.

The takers now outnumber the makers. They are coming to get your life's savings, and indeed your life itself.

Even under the current Medicare system there is rationing. If you preform a procedure, there is every chance that it will be disallowed after the fact. This despite the fact that you have documented the need. The result is that you have spent several hours taking care of someone and the hospital has expended untold resources only to be told that no one will be paid. In addition, with cardiovascular surgeons they are assessing their quality of care by looking at their mortality rates. Now that seems nice until you realize that if a surgeon is taking on the sicker and older people, he will have a higher rate of death. Many surgeons are folding to the pressure by not doing surgery on high risk patients. That is bad as these are the ones with a more significant improvement in prognosis after the procedure.

Yeah, and even under the current private system we already have rationing. But, it's not some mean old gubment agency doing the rationing. It's the private insurance industry making the medical decisions that, in some cases, determines if a person lives or dies. If course, I do understand that they have to watch that bottom line!! Sorry, that's just business.