Tales from the Trail

U.S. Representative Barney Frank has never been shy about expressing his opinions. His opening remarks at a hearing he chaired with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday was no exception. Frank poked fun at a political squabble over healthcare reform as he detailed his position on what to do about non-bank financial firms considered "too big to fail."

    "There will be death panels enacted by this Congress, but they will be for non-bank financial institutions that will not be considered too big to die.
    I say that because we have this euphemism that we are going to be 'resolving' these institutions. It has not been my experience that when someone says they are going to resolve something, they kill it. We are talking about dissolution, not resolution. We are talking about making it unpleasant for the entities. This is not a fate people will want."

Sarah Palin has issued a robust — and lengthy! — response to President Barack Obama after he accused her of trying to scare old folks for raising questions about “death panels.”

We’ll get to Palin in just a minute because when she talks, people listen. But first, what are death panels, you might ask?

Well, we read through a section of healthcare legislation being considered by the House of Representatives — section 1233 of H.R. 3200 called Advance Care Planning Consultation. It seems vague enough that you can read into it what you want. We’ll link to the section at the bottom for those who want to read more about it. It would allow Medicare to pay for consultations with physicians about end-of-life care while not requiring them.

This just in: President Barack Obama opposes pulling the plug on your sick grandmother.

In a sign of how twisted the healthcare debate has become, the president of the United States was forced to stand up in public and say definitively that he did not favor killing off the elderly when their care became too expensive.

The dramatic declaration came in New Hampshire in response to one of the wilder accusations circulated by opponents of his efforts to overhaul healthcare.