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Panama gets the first death panel case
by L.J. Malo

While most of the insurance provisions of the new health care reform law that apply within the United States don't apply abroad, and implementation of most of the changes at home will be slowly phased in, the law and hastily issued implementing regulations make the death panel provisions immediately effective in Panama. The first case was of a 68-year-old man who invested the bulk of his savings to buy a condo over the Internet, and put most of the rest of his money into a guaranteed foreign exchange fund run by a disbarred Canadian lawyer operating out of Panama. Upon his arrival in Panama City he found a hole in the ground where his condo was supposed to be and his investment fund gone. Later that day he had a stroke and was taken unconscious to Santo Tomas Hospital.

The death panel, headed by an Episcopalian priest and former death metal musician who's a US citizen but long-time resident of Panama, had to quickly come up with some policies and procedures. An effective way to allow relatives in the United States to have their say had to be devised, and safeguards against discrimination or partisan abuses had to be implemented. On a split vote, the panel rejected a point system by which habitually viewing Fox News or reading International Living or the Panama Guide would have been prima facie evidence of a life less worth living. The panelists instead decided that the test should not be one's sources of information, but the habitual taking of the sorts of advice that these sources dispense.

The patient's son and daughter, who testified at the death panel hearing by Skype, had somewhat different opinions. "THAT'S what he did with our inheritance?" the incredulous daugher asked. "That does it -- he's too stupid to live." The son was more concerned about being stuck with funeral expenses, and the cost of repatriating the body. However, he dropped his objections after another Obamacare provision, one that allows such expenses to be avoided, was explained to him.

After a unanimous death panel vote, an overdose of Drug Enforcement Administration surplus heroin was injected into the patient's IV tube. Following a brief religious service at the hospital suite, the remains were taken to Puerto Caimito and thrown in with the sardines at the fish meal grinding plant. The first patient to go before a death panel is now "being eaten by chickens," his son noted. "He would have wanted it that way."