Fear or fantasy?

Christopher Buckley's Boomsday was a fun read. Before anyone had heard of ObamaCare, the idea that the Federal government was on the hook for the care and feeding of a growing cohort of oldsters was well known. Buckley's spoof that end-of-life would become a political issue was perhaps slightly ahead of its time.

The President said this in his NY Times interview: "It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."

The Blogginheads discussion on this matter between Robert Wright and Ann Althouse went round and round. Wright mentioned that all insurers offer end-of-life counseling; Althouse thought that it's not the same if the insurer doing the counseling is the government.

This morning's WSJ includes "The Death Book for Veterans". The VAs "guidance" is chilling -- and this is not from Sarah Palin's imagination. Can we imagine a government that does not come up with counseling like this? Once upon a time we did.