In a few years, Sarah Palin will be a hot forty-something with her own little media empire. The thing we may remember most about Sarah Smile, though, could be the way she hijacked the multifaceted debate about end-of-life care and turned the whole thing into a screaming match about government "death panels."
Conjecture and hearsay are excellent ammo for radio rebels and Internet trolls, but now is the time for a critical examination of the real policies that will shape the way each one of us lives - and dies. Now is the time for some frank, honest talk about zombies.
Palin looks to the uninitiated observer like a simpleton spouting off the talking points of the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, but her vague comments about the regulation of health care are not simply misinformation. Even though insurance companies operate as de-facto death panels and make hundreds of decisions every day that regulate care for the privately insured, those of us united with Sarah Palin yearn for something better. The only Americans truly fit to serve on a death panel are those who have already died, as they clearly possess first-hand knowledge about failed health care and the end of life. Sarah Palin is obviously setting the table for zombies to become gatekeepers of health care.
A savvy politician, Palin has never once mentioned anything even remotely connected to zombies. However, she has never publicly denied that she has a stake in the potentially lucrative zombie lobby. Nor has Palin ever stated her opposition to zombies receiving subsidized health care.
Zombies, because they are technically dead, may be the ideal candidates for inclusion into the health-care system. Their high threshold for pain and inability to communicate effectively seem to preclude a large majority of medical malpractice lawsuits, thereby rendering the debate over tort reform a moot point.
Zombified Americans eat less than their living counterparts do, and expensive machines regulating breathing and the function of various organs would be frivolous in a zombie hospital. Zombies would mainly visit a hospital to a) get brains or b) have their limbs re-attached. Certainly, Sarah Palin knew these built-in advantages of zombies in health care when she first bandied about the idea of a government death panel.
Zombie studies is a growing research field at many top universities, and a group of four professors in Canada who calculated the damage of a potential zombie outbreak actually got their study published in a peer-reviewed journal. While a rampaging virus infected these hypothetical zombies, recent stem-cell technology actually uses dead stem cells to create living organs. We are going to have zombies, be it by science or by accident - and we must plan for this extra burden on our health care system.
All matter of serious talk will now commence about health care in America, and it will be terribly boring. Many people will use statistics in an egregious manner, and they will be at least partially correct.
However, all of this productive governance will likely spoil the growing debate about zombies, death panels and health care. Sarah Palin, zombie nation turns its creepy undead gaze to you. Keep fighting the good fight.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears on Thursdays.
