Limbaugh: VA Hospital Waiting Lists Are Essentially ‘Death Panels’

FILE - This May 14, 2012 file photo shows conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh speaking during a ceremony inducting him into the Hall of Famous Missourians in the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo. On Wednesday,... FILE - This May 14, 2012 file photo shows conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh speaking during a ceremony inducting him into the Hall of Famous Missourians in the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo. On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, Limbaugh won the Children’s Choice Book Award for author of the year for his best-selling “Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims." (AP Photo/Julie Smith, File) MORE LESS
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Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Monday suggested that the Veterans Affairs hospital backlogs and secret waiting lists may be “death panels.”

“It’s simply unconscionable,” Limbaugh said on his show about the VA waiting lists. “So you have to ask, the natural assumption is that nobody wants these people to die, even if you add the death panel component, nobody wants these people to die, yet they are. At the very least what we’re dealing with here is a total inability to deal with this. And at worst it’s the death panel being done on purpose.”

Limbaugh suggested that the VA let veterans die on purpose, using the “death panel” term employed by many conservatives to describe parts of the Affordable Care Act.

The radio host said knows that many will cast doubt on his claim, but said he is pretty convinced that the VA purposefully let veterans pass away before they could receive care.

“But no matter how you come down on this, I mean, some of you are not gonna want to believe the death panel aspect, even though the evidence is pretty clear,” he said. “If you don’t want to go that far, at the very least, there is rampant incompetence here and inability to run the medical treatment of the Veterans Affairs system.”

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