Two quick health care nuggets today.

First, Sarah Palin writing about the Obama plan on her Facebook account (that’s what happens when you leave the governor’s mansion):

[W]ho will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

I’m going to check with my sources, but I don’t think the term “death panel” appears in any of the bills under consideration in Congress. (Though there may be a Death Czar.)

Governor Palin’s point, though overwrought, is well-taken. But at a time when people are getting pretty fired up about health care, responsible public figures shouldn’t be making overwrought public statements. Let the facts do the talking.

Second, the AP has anointed Democrats the party of purity. In an article about the pharmaceutical lobby helping the White House and Congress make their push for government-run health care, AP’s David Espo writes:

The White House and allies in Congress are well aware of the effort by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a somewhat surprising political alliance, given the industry’s recent history of siding with Republicans and the Democrats’ disdain for special interests.

Come again? “The Democrats’ disdain for special interests”? Democrats obviously disdain this particular special interest, but they’re pretty cozy with many others – unions of all stripes, trial lawyers, environmental groups, ACORN.

Maybe Mr. Espo thinks those folks are just doing God’s work, but he ought to be a little more responsible in how he characterizes the two major parties in a story for the nation’s reporting service of record.