Don’t Fear the Reaper: Death Panels and the Dark One

Why on earth are we still hearing the words ‘death panels’?  Betsy McCaughey and her brainchild, that nonexistent group of unelected bureaucrats that will decide for us who lives and who dies, has been widely discredited. But apparently, not widely enough.

Recently, Sarah Palin herself—or, as Jezebel calls her in order not to give her any more attention, or Google hits, than she deserves—”The Dark Ex-Governor”—was granted space in the Wall Street Journal for a pre-emptive attack on the day of Obama’s major health-care address.

And she had the balls to bring up death panels, again.  This time it’s not about end-of-life counseling, it’s about the Independent Medicare Advisory Council Obama wants to create to monitor costs. They are “an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts” working, as Obama said, “outside of normal political channels.”

She continues: “Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans.”

As The Dark One correctly notes, Congress actually removed the unexpectedly troublesome provision for funding of “end-of-life counseling.” Clearly, the Democrats thought it would be that easy to excise the myth, as well. What the Dark One is telling us is that conservatives are going to locate this “death panel” somewhere in whatever legislation gets proposed, no matter what.

What does any of this have to do with science and religion, you ask? Isn’t this really politics? True. The “death panels” (born of the benign “end-of-life counseling”) are a classic neo-conservative neologism which fit in the canon along with “death tax” (a.k.a. “estate tax”) and “pro-life” (previously known as “anti-abortion”.)  The premise is simple: death=bad; life=good.  Fair enough.  No one likes death.  

But the “death panel” myth seems to me even weirder. Judgments on life or death have traditionally been religion’s territory. Think of the Jewish Book of Life, in which, according to tradition, the names of righteous Jews are written—to be blotted out of the Book of Life means death.

Then there’s Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates with his list, making sure only the worthy get past. (This is a folk tradition that evolved out of the Gospel verse in which Peter is given “the keys to heaven.”)

Even the Grim Reaper, a freelance death-judge not attached to a particular religious tradition, would be put out of a job were insurance companies to take over the business of deciding who’s time has come.

My point is a serious one: conservative political rhetoric is preying an extremely deep-seated anxiety, held even by non-religious people, about death. Death is one of those tricky place in which quantifiable, actuarial concerns—how much will the funeral cost; What will happen to my estate—chafe painfully against impossible-to-quantify fears: what will happen when I die? Will it be painful? What will my family do?

Some theorists of religion have pointed to this near-universal fear of death as a founding principle of religions worldwide—for some, fear of death even serves as an entire definition of religion.  Fear alone is obviously a reductive explanation of religions (I prefer anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s pleasingly vague “system of symbols.”)

But you can see where death has us all, religious and not, in somewhat of the same basket. The great unknown demands faith in something, be it biology or the Bible.