James L replied: ""We are going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive, so we're going to let you die." --ROBERT REICH, truth teller, Obama economic adviser. Death panels are never called death panels, and the never kill people. They just allow people to die because they refuse to save their lives. Causing a death would be evil. Allowing a death to happen, is just letting nature run its course. Those of us in the VA Hospital system already know that this is how government run health care works. I'm glad Reich is at least honest about it. Here's my first hand knowledge about it. It took 5 years of being bounced around the VA hospital, from one med student to another. They don't have many doctors so they staff the hospital with con ed 3rd year med students serving a 6 month indenture. After five years talking to kids who knew nothing about medicine and suffering chronic pain, I finally found out that there was a pain clinic at the VA. It only took 3 more years after that to get an appointment. I went in hoping for a miracle. What I got was tossed out of the clinic for daring to say that I'd already tried the medicine the doctor wanted to give me and it hadn't worked. Then I tried physical medicine. One of the doctors there was a skilled acupuncturist. We tried it and after 3 weeks I felt much better, But I kept getting worse again if I missed a week. After 8 years of suffering constant pain I had my life back. One day a week of needles and I could almost live a normal life. It was great. That's when I got the bad news. The doc said that because my relief was only temporary and required constant retreatments, that it had failed. I said that's crazy this works great. He said that he was the only acupuncturist there and he only worked 4 hours a week and had over 200 patients. The treatments failed utterly if not maintained every week and he was telling me he could see me only once a year. I asked why? He said that if the treatment couldn't cure my incurable condition, that it was a waste of money to treat me. You can't be made healthy, you can't be made productive, you are not worth helping. Improving my life by eliminating the chronic pain that tortures me every day of my life is not good enough to take up one hour a week of a VA doctor's time. When Obama says, "I will not allow you to spend money on things that don't make you healthy," That is what he means. If you can't be made healthy, if you're too old, or healing you would be too expensive, we will not waste our valuable time and money on you. Of course they won't kill you. They will let you die. I've been told that no one can help me, there is no hope and I should never go back again. I was sent home to die. But unfortunately, my disease isn't fatal. At least not directly. It is just torturous misery for the rest of my life; however long I can endure it before I take my own life. That's what government health care has done for me. I didn't take it out of context. He said he was telling the truth that no politician will ever have the courage or stupidity to say out loud. He was explaining what every intelligent person already knows but won't say because they are trying to fool the ignorant masses into believing something else. I read it in its full context."