The basis for this claim is two different provisions put forward in various versions of the (still not completely written) health-care bill.

The first is a proposal to establish a panel of medical experts who would determine which treatments are supposedly most cost-effective and thus will be paid for under a government-run system—and which will not. In a New York Times interview in April, which makes very instructive reading in the current debate, President Obama explained that "part of what I think government can do effectively" is to be a "broker" "between patient and provider"—that is, between you and your doctor—"in assessing and evaluating treatment options." He continued: "And certainly that's true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control."

The example he gives? Whether his ailing grandmother should have been allowed a hip replacement in the final months of her life. "End-of-life care" he said, is an area where "you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." So who is going to make the decisions about grandma's cancer treatment and hip replacement surgery? "It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance." Just don't call it a "death panel"!

Other countries already have such a system. In Britain, it's known by the creepy, Orwellian acronym NICE, for National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and it is the panel charged with deciding, for example, that a cancer drug that would extend your life by six months is too expensive because you don't have enough "quality adjusted life years" remaining to justify your cost to the National Health Service. This is a rationing board for government-provided medical care, based on a bureaucratic formula that tells you how much your life is worth to the state.

The second provision in the current health-care reform, covered in more detail by Palin in a follow-up posting, is a proposal—actually included in a Senate version of the bill until Palin pointed it out—that would give doctors a financial incentive to approach their patients about "end-of-life planning." This would likely have the effect of pushing doctors to discourage additional treatment in the last years and months of one's life in order to cut costs for the government.

Obama has dismissed these concerns—somewhat flippantly—as mere "rumors." But they are totally in keeping with his own statements and with the logical consequences and overall direction of the bill.

And worse: the fears about "death panels" and rationing of care for the elderly are validated by the moral justifications offered for the health-care bill in the first place. In a recent editorial, the Wall Street Journal does an excellent job of describing the economic factors that will necessitate rationing of health-care and denial of care for the elderly. But it is important to grasp that this is not an accidental or unintended consequence of government control of health care. It is an intended consequence, following directly from the basic moral premise behind the health-care bill: the premise that your medical care is the business of "society."

Thus, when discussing the "difficult moral issues" that are raised by end-of-life care, President Obama says, "I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place," leading to Obama's idea of an "independent group" being put in charge.

Is this how you would naturally think about decisions regarding the end of your own life? Would you say, "let's have a democratic conversation about it"? Or would you respond that this is your life and hence your decision, which cannot morally be made by anyone else?

Jack Wakeland sent me an e-mail yesterday which captured how these "end-of-life" decisions—let's put it bluntly: decisions about dying—are currently, and properly, treated.

"When a patient is terminally ill, it is entirely proper and legitimate for doctors to push for frank discussions between the patient and his family about whether or not the medical profession can really do anything for him other than alleviate pain. It is entirely proper and legitimate for the patient to consider the financial burden he is imposing on his family if they are supporting him, or the financial loss to his family if he intends to bequeath to them what remains of his estate after his death. This kind of end-of-life cost/benefit analysis is a deeply personal issue. It is so intensely personal that one's own family members—including one's own wife or husband—may not legitimately involve themselves in the decision unless they're asked by the one who is to die."

Yet Obama is proposing to turn the subject over to a whole bunch of strangers, to an "independent group" "guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists."

Under what morality is this acceptable? Ask one of the "ethicists": Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and a "special advisor for health policy" in the Obama administration. Dr. Emanuel has advocated the denial of care based on a viciously thorough, consistent version of collectivism: the premise that an individual's life is only valuable insofar as he is valuable to the collective.

In an article titled "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions," published in the medical journal The Lancet in January of this year, Dr. Emanuel and his co-authors advocate "a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated." Get that? We're going to "allocate" "chances that are attenuated." Just don't call it a "death panel"!

The administration's toadying defenders in the press have leapt to object that Dr. Emanuel was "only addressing extreme cases like organ donation," but the examples that lead his article include "beds in intensive care units," penicillin, and kidney dialysis (which were once quite scarce). Yet what is important is not so much the treatments that are to be rationed, but the principle on which they would be rationed.

In a 1996 article, Emanuel advocated government guarantees of health care for those treatments that would make possible the "full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations," while "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed."

Thus, it is "public participation"—a person's usefulness to society—that is the criterion by which health care is granted or "attenuated."

Of course, this raises the specter of the politicization of health care. After all, are the tea party protesters good "participating citizens"? Not according to Nancy Pelosi. So maybe those good "participating citizens" in the Service Employees International Union should be first in line for the state's allocation of scarce health-care resources.

Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the left still adheres to the philosophy of collectivism—the ghostly influence of the twisted moral code that inspired the murder of millions in the 20th century. The American people sense this, and that is why they are recoiling in horror from Obama's plan for a greater government role in health care. Once the government sets itself up as the allocator of "society's" resources, the people—and especially the elderly—are afraid that they will be granted or denied care based on some nebulous criteria that attempts to measure how useful they have been or will be to society.

Greater government control puts the individual's life at the mercy of collective—which means the state. And that is what makes people justifiable terrified of Obama's health-care plan.

The individual is not a mere cog in the collective and cannot be regarded as such—or discarded when he is no longer useful to the state. That view is a fundamental rejection of the founding ideal of this nation: that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means that each individual life is an end in itself, an irreplaceable value whose fate can only be decided by one person: the individual himself.

Any legislation that threatens to undermine this code of American individualism must be thoroughly and immediately rejected. It's time to convene a death panel to discuss end-of-life planning for Obama's health-care bill.

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com.