Letter: Tea party is now the death panel

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The term death panel, in reference to the Affordable Care Act, was coined by then vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in August 2009. The fear of the tea party darling was that a panel of bureaucrats would decide the fate of unhealthy Americans. Well ... the tea party has become the death panel they railed against.

Under the Affordable Care Act, individual governors are to elect whether their states accept federal funds for Medicaid expansion. Holding to their ideology, 24 states, mostly with Republican governors, have been pressured into declining Medicaid expansion money. Much of this pressure has come from the tea party.

Medicaid expansion would allow more than 5.7 million more Americans to qualify for health coverage. I find it ironic that the politicians in the tea party, with their fear of death panels, oppose life-saving health care for 5.7 million Americans.

Paula Enquist

Sandy