GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—President Barack Obama invoked his own anguish over the death of a loved one during a town hall meeting on health care reform in Grand Junction.
Obama talked about his grandmother’s death to counter the debunked notion that Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care would include “death panels” to deny care to frail seniors.
Obama says some Republican members of Congress have previously backed end-of-life counseling in government health care programs and called the argument “dishonest”.
Conservatives have called such counseling a step toward euthanasia. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has likened the idea to a bureaucratic “death panel” that would decide whether sick people get to live. Those claims have been widely discredited but the issue remains a political weapon in the increasingly bitter health care debate.
