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No matter how many times this "death panel" myth gets debunked, you can count on Fox to do their best to continue to resuscitate it, as Fox's Neil Cavuto and one of their team of crackpot doctors, Manny Alvarez did this Thursday afternoon.

Leave it to Fox to take what otherwise looks like a pretty benign study by the University of California, San Francisco and turn it on its head as the new "death panels" in "Obamacare." Alvarez wrote an op-ed for the Fox News web site which you can read here which I'm quite sure was the basis for his appearance here with Cavuto: Dr. Manny: I am completely against this new medical ‘death test’:

Let me be very clear: I did not go into medicine to decide who lives and who dies.

I went into health care because I wanted to heal, to comfort, to educate and to study the illnesses that afflict my patients. And I don’t need a crystal ball to know when a patient is extremely safe or when he or she is going to die.

So I am somewhat confused as to the purpose of this new ‘mortality index.’ A new study from the University of California, San Francisco with funding from the federal government revealed 12 specific items physicians can use to help them determine whether costly screenings or medical procedures are worth the risk for patients unlikely to live 10 years or more.

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Fox News co-host Eric Bolling on Wednesday asserted that President Barack Obama's health care reform law could "literally" kill people.

During a segment about Medicare on Fox News' The Five, co-host Dana Perino asked Bolling if Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan should do more interviews to explain that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's plan would give seniors a choice of using private insurance.

"Absolutely not," Bolling insisted. "I spent the better part of all day trying to figure out the [Romney] plan and I'll tell you, here's what I found out. I'm not sure it's going to work. I'm not sure because it's not a mandatory switch over from the defined benefits to the defined contributions."

But the conservative Fox News co-host did have some advice for how Romney and Ryan could push back against the Obama campaign's argument that the GOP hopeful's plan would end Medicare as it exists today.

"It has to be laid out this way: Either you have Obamacare or you don't," Bolling explained. "Because Obamacare literally may kill you."

"I mean, you can say Mitt Romney did kill [people with layoffs by Bain Capital] -- this could kill you because of the independent panel," he added. "That board is going to be a big problem. We have bureaucrats deciding what's fiscally is responsible, which operations you can [have]."

"That's not true," liberal co-host Bob Beckel argued.

"Yes, they are," Bolling replied. "When you're sick, there is no amount of money that you wouldn't be willing to pay to feel better. Now, you're going to have someone else deciding what's good or not good, and whether it's worth the money for them to spend."

In 2009, PolitiFact awarded former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) the the "lie of the year" for her claim that the Affordable Care Act would establish so-called "death panels."

A fact check by The Associated Press determined that "Palin and other critics are wrong" that the health care bill would create a "death panel."

"Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision," the AP wrote. "The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes."

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We all knew the talking heads over at Fox weren't going to react well after the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. On this Thursday evening's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Caribou Barbie was given lots of fact-free air time to lie freely about the decision and what's supposedly in the health care law.

As Think Progress noted: Taxes Are The New Death Panels: Exposing The Latest Lie About Obamacare:

Republicans are responding to the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the individual mandate by constructing a new “death panels”-like lie. The law, they argue, imposes a burdensome tax on millions of middle class families who will have to pay a penalty for not purchasing health care coverage by 2014. The line originates in the majority’s decision, which found that Congress has the authority to require individuals to buy coverage under its taxing power, but it doesn’t mean what the Republicans are suggesting. The truth is that the penalty for not buying insurance — $695 or 2.5 percent of household income — is well in line with other policies that are designed to encourage and promote a particular kind of economic behavior.

Someone needs to remind Van Susteren of those pesky facts, since she allowed Palin to get away with telling that same lie during this interview. We also had more tentherism talk and lies and fearmongering, which our friends over at News Hounds summed up nicely here: Sarah Palin Lectures President Obama On The Constitutionality Of Health Care Reform:

Less than 10 days after Fox News presented Sarah Palin to attack President Obama's understanding of the 10th Amendment with regard to immigration policy, she was back on the “fair and balanced” network to lecture him about it with regard to health care reform. While she was at it, she offered her insights into economics and taxes, too. And host Greta Van Susteren – who really is a lawyer – helped further the pretense that Palin was a legitimate expert every step of the way.

The basis for the whole discussion on last night's On The Record, arose from a Palin tweet earlier in the day. Referring to the Supreme Court ruling that the individual mandate in Obama’s health care reform legislation was a tax and therefore Constitutional, Palin tweeted, “Obama lied to the American people. Again. He said it wasn’t a tax. Obama lies; freedom dies.” It’s pretty much the same old, same old Palin. But to Van Susteren, that was grounds for probing her deeper thoughts.

Van Susteren asked, “That’s about 140 characters or less as to how you feel about this decision today. Now tell me, given more chance to amplify it, your view of what happened today.”

Palin said she tended to agree with the term “treachery” to describe Chief Justice Roberts' swing vote. But she said she was optimistic because health care reform is now in the hands of the people and that Congress can repeal it. “I want to see that done in July,” she said.

There’s zero chance of that happening but somehow Van Susteren didn’t want to point that out to the "we report, you decide' network's viewers. Instead, she asked her newly minted expert if Justice Roberts was correct in saying the mandate is a tax. And Van Susteren asked the question in a form designed to elicit an attack on President Obama.

More there so go read the rest. Full transcript below the fold.

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The wife of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that God is responsible for her husband's recent surge in popularity.

"I personally think this is God's will," Karen Santorum told GBTV's Glenn Beck on Thursday. "I think He has us on a path. And I do think there's a lot more happening that what we are seeing."

"How close do you think we are to losing the republic?" Beck wondered.

"Oh, it's such a concern," Karen Santorum warned. "I just really believe so strongly. This is why we are making the sacrifice we are as a family to give all. Because I do believe if President Obama is elected again, I do believe we are going to lose our nation as we know it."

"Before we made the decision [to run], it was about a year, a year and a half, and initially when Rick mentioned it, I was just, 'No way.'"

"I said we need to pray about it," Rick Santorum recalled. "She said, 'No, I'm not going to pray about it. God couldn't possibly want you to do this.'"

But eventually Karen Santorum did seek God's guidance on the matter.

"I really started to pray about it, and I did always feel in my heart that God had big plans for Rick," she explained. "Eventually it was there, that tugging at my heart."

"It's awful, isn't it?" Beck asked.

"It is hard because you know it's a hard path," Karen Santorum agreed. "What did it for me, though, was Obamacare. Because we have, as you know, a little precious -- a little angel, little Bella -- special needs little girl. And when Obamacare passed, that was it. That put the fire in my belly."

"How much danger are the most vulnerable in our society in if Obamacare actually kicks in and the whole bell curve?" Beck pressed.

"It's all about utilization," Rick Santorum replied, referring to the false claim that the Affordable Care Act would create "death panels."

"It's all about how do we best allocate resources?" the candidate added. "It's not the death panel itself. I think Sarah [Palin] was talking about the broader idea of what socialized medicine is. And that is government allocating resources based on how to get the best bang for your dollar. It's all about utility. It's all about usefulness of the person to society instead of the dignity of the human life."

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and businessman Herman Cain have all claimed that God urged them to seek the Republican nomination for president.

(H/T: The Washington Post, The Right Scoop)

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Monday asserted that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was "uniquely unqualified" for the GOP nomination because of the similarities between health care laws in Massachusetts and President Barack Obama's health care reforms, including the repeatedly debunked claim that "death panels" would ration care to seniors.

Speaking at a ballroom across the street from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Santorum pointed to a report (PDF) from the the non-partisan organization Families USA that found at least 15 major similarities between Obama's Affordable Care Act and the reforms Romney enacted in Massachusetts.

"Both create government panels to dictate quality and cost containment," Santorum explained. "Some of you may be familiar with the Independent Payment Advisory Board -- which is a board separate from Congress, independent of Congress -- that President Obama created to control health care costs. How? By cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals under the Medicare program. Well, Gov. Romney has a similar program called the Council on Health Quality and Costs."

"Some people refer to these types of boards as death panels," he added. "Why? Because they ultimately decide to ration care to those procedures and people because they don't believe these procedures are effective in providing care, that the utilization isn't worth the costs."

"So, again, you have government making decisions and rationing and apportioning care based on research that shows what outcomes are dictated by the research that's out there."

In 2009, Politifact named "death panels," a term thought to have been first used by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), as their "Lie of the Year."

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As our friends at Media pointed out, Bill Kristol was still fear mongering about government health care rationing on Fox News Sunday this weekend.

WALLACE: Let's go to the substance of this before we get back to the regulation question, Bill, because there is, the fact -- as I suspect, a number of us have living wills, do not resuscitate things. And "The Wall Street Journal" editorial, as you say, said the problem wasn't the policy, it was the process, the idea of being forced to drop something out of the law and then going around Congress and doing it through a regulation.

But there was an interesting article I read yesterday that pointed out states like Arizona and Indiana are already in their state Medicaid, beginning to ration care and saying, you know, we're just not going to pay for transplants or extraordinary measures because we can't afford to do it. So, in that sense, there is already rationing going on, a lot more serious than this end-of-life counseling.

KRISTOL: And the more government takes over health care, the more government rationing there will be, and the more the government will tell you whether you have to have a living will or whether you have to discuss it with your doctor every year, or every five years. And that is this argument against Obamacare.

The point about this regulation, it was buried in the thousand of pages of regulations. Do we really want our health care system run by people at HHS, writing ten thousands of pages of regulations based on this incredibly complex Obamacare bill, or do we want a system in which people can work this out with their own doctors? I think it's a very good issue for Republicans to have the oversight hearings on, along with many, many other regulatory issues where Republicans should look a look at what the Obama administration is doing.

As Media Matters noted in their article, there is plenty of rationing going on, but it's the insurance companies that are doing it.

Chris Wallace pointed to Arizona as an example of governments rationing their health care, but he didn't bother to mention how the state got there as this article explains.

How we got here: Arizona budget history:

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From our friends at Newshounds, the death panels and Betsy McCaughey are back fearmongering over end-of-life counseling. Sweet Jesus, these people make my head hurt. I thought we had seen the last of this shyster once the health care bill passed, but apparently I was wrong.

Fox News Tries To Rehabilitate Palin’s Discredited “Death Panels” Smear:

As The New York Times reported yesterday, the Obama administration has enacted Medicare regulations to include an end-of-life planning provision similar to one struck out of the health care reform bill after Sarah Palin “touched off a political storm over ‘death panels.’” Palin’s “death panels” accusation wasn’t just a lie, it was PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for 2009. But good ol’ Fox News resuscitated the lie and gave it new life by just “asking” if the new regulations mark the return of death panels. Fortunately, Democratic Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers and liberal pundit Caroline Heldman forcefully rebutted the suggestion.

The possible return of “death panels” was all over Fox News today with segments with such FoxNews.com titles as, ‘Death Panel’ Comeback? Return of Death Panels? and ‘Death Panel’ Deception? The ‘Death Panel’ Comeback? segment, on The O’Reilly Factor, featured Media Matters 2009 Health Care Misinformer of the Year: Betsy McCaughey. [...]

But substitute host Eric Bolling distorted those details in his introduction to the O’Reilly Factor segment (the first video below). Bolling said, “Now the reports that President Obama is bringing back end of life planning with the Medicare regulation set to go into effect next week. The White House says, ‘No, that’s not true,’ issued a statement blaming a law signed by President Bush. So what’s really going on?” Bolling later said, “Whether or not this was brought up in the Bush Administration, who cares?”

Bolling made no pretense of independence, supposedly a hallmark of The Factor. “I thought we were done with this (death panels)… but they’re back.” Bolling offered no challenge to McCaughey’s misinformation (government will be scripting end-of-life decisions, the Obama administration is enacting via regulation what it could not enact via legislation) but asked her to “take our viewer exactly what this regulation says… It incentives them to discuss end-of-life decisions.” To Heldman, he asked, “Do we really need to incentivize doctors to ask Grandma whether she wants to pull the plug year after year after year? Isn’t once enough?”

Heldman, already a News Hounds Top Dog, was in especially good form in the segment.

Yeah, heaven forbid the government might pay to help you take the burden off of your family about what to do with you if they don't feel it's worth keeping you alive and longer and you would have agreed if given the chance. The horror!

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Steve Doocy and his cohorts at Fox & Friends make Ed Schultz's Psycho Talk segment for this -- Doocy: ‘Makes sense’ to give people same care as dogs:

Fox & Friends on Friday may have finally offered up the alternative to "ObamaCare" that Republicans and other health reform opponents haven't stepped up with.

The solution? Treat patients as if they were pets.

To be fair, it wasn't the Fox show hosts' idea. It came from a Newsweek article by veterinary oncologist Karen Oberthaler, who offers an idea for reducing health care costs. She says modeling treatment for humans after veterinary clinics could reduce the use of wasteful and often unnecessary tests.

"A very brilliant veterinary oncologist has a suggestion. She says we should treat people like they treat their dogs," guest host Dari Alexander said.

"Which makes a lot of sense," host Steve Doocy responded, to a few guffaws from his co-hosts.

Read on...

And as Ed noted, they moved on to death panels from there. Heaven forbid anyone on Fox would ever pass up another opportunity to scare the hell out of their viewers.

From Keith's diary over at Daily KOS, A Special Comment From My Father:

Last Friday night, my father asked me to kill him.

This is not the central fact around which tomorrow's health care summit at Blair House will, or should, revolve. But I'd like it on the record somewhere that I asked all those going there, including the President, to think more about people like my father - patients, in our hospitals, at this moment - and less about elections and political points and "crashing the party."

[...]

I get his attention again. I ask him: do you want me to stop all of this? And he looks at me and mouths "yes." And I ask him: you understand what happens then. And he looks at me and mouths "yes." And I ask him: you realize you are not terminally ill, and if we do stop all of this, it might not be quick. And he mouths "stop this." And I say, trying to joke him out of it -- and trust me, gallows humor is your best defense in this situation -- "what? You want me to smother you with a pillow?" And he mouths "yes - kill me"...

And as I left that night the full impact of these last six months washed over me. What I had done, conferring with the resident in ICU, the conversation about my father's panicky, not-in-complete-control-of-his-faculties demand that all treatment stop, about the options and the consequences and the compromise - the sedation -- the help for a brave man who just needed a break... that conversation, that one -- was what these ghouls who are walking into Blair House tomorrow morning decided to call "Death Panels." Continue reading...

Sarah Palin makes Ed's Psycho Talk for continuing to spread her 'death panels' lie with some help from Sean Hannity, despite that lie winning PolitiFact's 'Lie of the Year'.

As Ed said, Palin doesn't seem to have too much trouble when it comes to disregarding facts. And Ed, she's going to be 'politically relevant' as long as the media keeps propping her up as someone we should pay attention to, but I don't think there's any way in hell she's running for office again. She's going to milk her celebrity for every penny she can squeeze out of it until the day she dies, or she does something so ridiculous that even the right becomes embarrassed about it. That seems to be an impossible threshold to meet for now. Nothing embarrasses these people.