“The argument from authority is the use of testimony from a witness of such eminence and unquestioned impartiality that his word carries conviction to all.”

The above is almost never the “authority” being appealed to in discussions of maters but rather the ordinary “expert” witness, who do not merit the claim of “authority” and can be countered by other experts holding differing opinions.

“Expert witnesses are good witnesses so long as they confine themselves to facts–provided they can be shown to be reasonably impartial; but when they begin to state opinions, such testimony proves nothing more than that the people who know the most about the subject disagree–which fact we knew already. Little attention need be given in most arguments to testimony as to opinions without facts on which the opinions are based. “

In fact the Health care bill “gave incentives to doctors and hospitals for efficiency and improved care.” The incentives may not really lower costs as much as Democrats think, but when other countries have lower health care costs without “death panels’ it is reasonable to think there are some savings available.

Also there was the characterization of payments for optional “appointments for patients to discuss living wills, health care directives and other end-of-life issues” as “required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner” by another Republican.

Even if there are not sufficient savings from ending insurance bureaucracy and other measures, “saying no or later” can start with quality of life services like knee replacements. Then there is the question as to whether savings is even a necessary feature from the Democrat’s point of view or merely nice to have. In most cases Democrats are generally assumed to be more likely to want to raise taxes rather than cut services than Republicans.

So in short I would say that Palin’s death panel description is misleading because she characterizes the health care bill as
one that will set up a bureaucratic panel to decide if some one is “productive” enough to live when there is nothing like that in the bill even by wildly extrapolating possible indirect consequences of the bill.

For example, with minimum wage:

– Thesis: Minimum wage laws reduce employment.

– Antithesis: Card-Krueger study

– Synthesis: How high the minimum wage is matters. A $100 minimum wage would crush unemployment, but a $1 minimum wage would be irrelevant.

From a little googling, I find this “lie of the year” article:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/dec/18/politifact-lie-year-death-panels/

However, I don’t see where in it they point out Palin being inaccurate. All she points out is that the only realistic way for nationalized medical care to control costs is to sometimes say no. One category of saying no is patients that are likely near the end of their life. And who decides when this happens? A bureaucratic panel.

I would be very interested if anyone can say what I am missing. Not that I am a huge Palin fan, but I think she got this one right.