Grassley was for ‘death panels’ before he was against them

[steven johnson]

Chuckie, you are a very bad evil doll.

But Amy Sullivan at Time Magazine has found that long before Grassley was a crusader against this type of counseling, he actually voted to support it.
Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators?

Let’s go to the bill text, shall we? “The covered services are: evaluating the beneficiary’s need for pain and symptom management, including the individual’s need for hospice care; counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and advising the beneficiary regarding advanced care planning.” The only difference between the 2003 provision and the infamous Section 1233 that threatens the very future and moral sanctity of the Republic is that the first applied only to terminally ill patients. Section 1233 would expand funding so that people could voluntarily receive counseling before they become terminally ill.
So either Republicans were for death panels in 2003 before turning against them now–or they’re lying about end-of-life counseling in order to frighten the bejeezus out of their fellow citizens and defeat health reform by any means necessary. Which is it, Mr. Grassley?



Grassley was for ‘death panels’ before he was against them

[BumRushDaShow]

1. He threw himself under the bus.

The latest trick that repukes have done. They have completely given up their party to the lunatic fringe.

[Son Of Wendigo]

2. Letter To Grassley

I wrote the following letter to Senator Grassley. I hope that he either reads it himself or else someone reads it to him.

August 14, 2009

Senator Charles Grassley
721 Federal Building
210 Walnut Street
Des Moines, IA 50309

Three days ago, I watched President Obama’s town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. During his introductory remarks he praised you and two other Republican Senators for your bipartisan work in the Senate Finance Committee toward crafting the Senate version of the health care reform bill.

It turns out he was mistaken about you.

The next night, I saw a film clip of you telling a crowd in Iowa that you had, in effect, only been pretending to help out. You said your goal had been all along to prevent the bill from coming out of committee until after the August recess. Without your efforts along this line, you said, the bill would have come out of committee in mid-June and would most likely have passed the whole Senate before the recess. You wasted nearly two months.

You also took credit for killing the section of the bill which would allow Medicare to pay doctors for providing counseling and necessary information to their patients who wished on their own volition to establish living wills or advance directives. This section is the apparent source of the obscene Republican canard that Health Care Reform would set up death panels which would kill the elderly because their care was so expensive.

You referred to the death panels obliquely in the same clip. You advised your constituents to be afraid because the bill would authorize the government to kill granny.

Shame on you. Your actions are despicable. As a Senator, you not only represent your own state. Actions taken in the Senate often affect the entire country. You have let us all down. About 70 per cent of Americans want health care reform. Even 50 percent of Republicans do, according to some poll numbers I read a couple of weeks ago. I suspect that the numbers are approximately the same in Iowa. All Americans would benefit from Health Care Reform.

It seems to me that you don’t care about Americans very much, at least not those who don’t run the big health corporations that make enormous profits from our current “system.” You care about them very much, particularly considering that you are one of the biggest recipients of “campaign contributions” from these corporations in the Senate. Many would call them “bribes.” You are clearly bought and paid for, and the only interest you serve on this issue is that of your corporate masters.

Thousands of Americans die each year because they have no health care, or have inadequate health care, or have had their health care revoked for some reason, usually the potential cost to the insurance company. Over a million Americans with inadequate or no health care will be financially ruined by illness and be forced into bankruptcy, which will quite likely cost those who are homeowners their homes, thanks to the changes to the bankruptcy laws inflicted on us by the last Republican controlled congress. If some foreign government had the power to do this to our citizens and our economy, we would rightly consider them to be an enemy of the United States. How are you any different?

No one will ever trust you again, and they shouldn’t. I sincerely hope that President Obama never does. You not only lied with your words, you lied with your actions when you misrepresented yourself as a bipartisan negotiator to both your colleagues and to all Americans. I don’t know how you can look in a mirror in the morning, or how you can sleep at night, but I guess all that money from the health care industry helps. I pray that you are turned out of office next year. Your departure from the Senate would be all Americans’, gain. Words and actions like yours are what's destroying the Republican Party, and I, for one, will be glad to see it go.

Sincerely

[LAGC]

3. Did you hand-write it?

Better chance of it getting noticed that way.