Dean on Palin’s health care claims: ‘She made that up’

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told CNN Sunday that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had deliberately made up charges that the Obama administration’s health care bill would lead to euthanasia.

“About euthanasia, they're just totally erroneous. She just made that up,” he said. “Just like the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ that she supposedly didn't support.

“There's nothing like euthanasia in the bill. I practiced medicine for a long time, and of course you have to have end of life discussions - the patients want that. There's nothing... euthanasia's not in this bill.”

Dean was referring comments Palin made late Friday in a post on her Facebook page. In her post, the former Republican vice presidential candidate said President Obama’s health care plan would create a “death panel” that would weigh whether her parents or son Trig were “worthy of health care.”

She discounted the administration’s view that the president’s plan would cut health care costs, saying the only path to lower costs was less treatment.

"And who will suffer the most when they ration care?" she wrote. "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."

Palin has mostly steered clear of interviews with reporters since leaving office last month. "Democracy depends on you. That is why our troops are willing to die for you," she told the media in her farewell speech. "So how about in honor of the American soldier, ya quit making things up?" She spent several days last week in New York, meeting with her book publisher.