Sarah Palin visited the Hannity show last night where she offered her deepest thoughts on Obamacare – which pretty much amounted to reiterating her death panel Lie of the Year for 2009 and egging on the Tea Party to make a “wise decision” and force a government shutdown over defunding Obamacare.
But first, Sean Hannity asked what Palin thought of Howard Dean’s op-ed which Hannity falsely described as “acknowledging” death panels. In fact, Dean’s op-ed, which was supportive of Obamacare overall, suggested getting rid of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) mostly because they don’t control costs, not because they become death panels:
What ends up happening in these schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients. Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the IPAB, in its current form, won’t save a single dime before 2021. …I believe the IPAB will never control costs based on the long record of previous attempts in many of the states, including my own state of Vermont.
Of course, Palin knew nothing of Dean’s piece. She said, “I haven’t wasted my time on it because I think I and others wasted too much time listening to the liberal pundits a few years ago when they said that was the biggest lie of the year …my claim that death panels were a part of Obamacare.” I guess that’s when journalism major Palin must have given up that onerous chore of reading “all” the newspapers.
So Hannity moved on to the Tea Party plan to defund Obamacare by threatening to shut down the government and which is causing a rift in the Republican party. “What’s your reaction?” Hannity asked.
Palin replied:
That’s common sense. …Congress holds the purse strings. They can unfund anything they want to and that’s how you stop something that is not right, it’s not good, it’s not economic for we the people. So it’s a wise decision for Mr. Lee and others to decide not to budget for something that’s gonna be so burdensome to the American people.
Palin also took a shot or two at the Republican Party "elites" who are against this idea (think Fox colleague Karl Rove). Once again, I wonder how much longer her employment will last at GOP Communications, aka Fox News.