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Phil Gramm's Momma Versus The Death Panels

Phil Gramm today has an op-ed urging Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He concludes with this flourish:

There is one more overwhelming reason freedom is so critical in health care. In the end, even the greatest health-care system in the world fails. At 92, my mother decided to stop going to the hospital, stop going to the doctor, stop taking her medicine, and to die in her own bed. It was a free choice, and she made it. For her family, it was a painful choice, but she died as she lived—proud and free. Government bureaucrats did not make that decision; she did. And that made all the difference.

Notice that in this instance, "free" means "having access to single-payer health care." This is quite different from the status quo, where individuals are free to shop for their own insurance, insurance companies are free to deny them coverage if they're sick, and the individual in turn can make a free choice between bankrupting their family to obtain medical care or dying.