The Medicare "Death Panel" Lie Wins

[jtown1123]

Today, reports are showing that President Obama will remove the end of life planning provision he had recently decided to put in Medicare. I guess any slight whiff of controversy, no matter how absurd or untrue, ultimately has the power.

From the Boston Globe:

DURING THE health reform debate in 2009, Republican alarmists decried a provision to pay doctors to discuss end-of-life treatment options with Medicare patients as tantamount to “death panels.’’ The bill as finally approved lacked that clause, but late last year Obama administration officials authorized such counseling in a Medicare regulation on annual physical examinations. Now they have withdrawn that provision in a cave-in to expected opposition. The retreat is lamentable. Source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/01/06/obama_bows_to_death_panels/

At the end of the day, all this provision did was pay doctors who had appointments to discuss end of life decisions like DNR's and the like with their patients. That's it folks. The fact that something so routine (and important) was taken out because of a tea party lie, concerns me the President will not stick up for what is right and sane when we have even bigger battles with the Republicans.

[markpkessinger]

1. God, this is infuriating!

Doesn't this administration get the fact that each time they capitulate to this kind of nonsense, they effectively validate in the minds of a certain portion of the electorate? Don't they understand the damage they do to public discourse over the longer run each time they give in to the right's lies? This whole issue could have been readily dispatched within a couple of news cycles, and in any case wouldn't have amounted to anything more than a minor outcry from crazy tea partier types (who most of the public pretty much tunes out these days). Do the President's political advisors not understand that the concept of "messaging" is about what they do as much as it is about what they say. Aaarrgh!

[jtown1123]

2. I'm right there with you. Capitulating means you validate the lie.

[DrDan]

3. this "death panel" lie is so ridiculous - have we last any semblance of a spine

[w8liftinglady]

4. and those who think doctors casually discuss DNR and end-of-life

with families are completely uninformed.

I can not tell you how many families and patients were grateful that the doctor initiated the conversation.It kills a family to see a previously robust person dying a slow death,but they have the guilt thing about not being aggressive with Dad's treatment.To have the doctor give them options is a blessing for these families.
Now,some uncaring hypocrite throws the "Right-to-life" bullshit at these families.

I have seen many old men die with their old marine cap on,surrounded by kids and grandkids...a smile on their face because it was THEIR choice ,young women with terminal diseases die with their mom and dad there crying but relieved to see their daughter finally free from pain in her last days.

This is the cruelist of things.

[elocs]

5. Here is what I posted in another thread about this yesterday and my home town:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=119605&mesg_id=119819

My hometown, La Crosse, WI, and "Death Panels"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12...

The story is entitled: "Why This Wisconsin City Is The Best Place To Die"

Now, anytime a doctor in this large health system pulls up their records, their wishes for end-of-life care will be prominently displayed. The result of all this attention is that nearly all adults who die in La Crosse, 96 percent of them, die with a completed advance directive. That's by far the highest rate in the country.

Bud Hammes, the medical ethicist who started Respecting Choices, says "We believe that our patients deserve to have an opportunity at least to have these conversations."

But it's expensive to spend time with patients filling out living wills. Medicare doesn't reimburse for the time the hospital's nurses, chaplains and social workers do this. Bud Hammes, the medical ethicist who started the program, called Respecting Choices, says it costs the hospital system millions of dollars a year. "We just build it into the overhead of the organization. We believe it's part of good patient care. We believe that our patients deserve to have an opportunity at least to have these conversations."

And that's how La Crosse unexpectedly got in the middle of the national debate over health care and the so-called "death panels."


And so the concessions and compromises on health care begin this year.

[Sal Minella]

7. How can this cost "millions of dollars?"

Is this like the $27 aspirin administered in the ER?

Some things are just a sensible part of ordinary care, seems to me.

[bullwinkle428]

6. Makes you wonder what else will be conceded to the Pukes on HCR.

[Poboy]

8. "Obama capitulates AGAIN" I want to get a copyright on this.

I could be a millionare by 2012.

[ljm2002]

9. In case we had any remaining shred of hope...

...that President Obama would start standing up to the bastards, this has removed any doubts on that score.

President Obama has just demonstrated how he will continue to govern. Bipartisanship, it's all the rage. Well, except for those on the other side.