{"id":5777,"date":"2009-10-30T12:10:47","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T17:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5777"},"modified":"2009-10-30T10:05:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T15:05:46","slug":"but-at-least-theres-no-death-panels-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5777","title":{"rendered":"But At Least There’s No Death Panels, Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Um, yeah.\u00a0 Of course there are<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The provision\u00a0[in the latest “Healthcare Bill”]\u00a0allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.<\/p>\n

For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed this summer to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger. Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach.<\/p>\n

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at the time a lead negotiator on health care legislation, told constituents at a town hall meeting they had good reason to question the proposal.<\/p>\n

“I don’t have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family,” he said. “We should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the real problem – if you’re a Democrat who wants to socialize the healthcare system – isn’t that government will wield the power of life and death (via “case management”, which is indeed what HMOs do today – the difference being that HMOs can be left for competitors, or sued).\u00a0<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 It’s that all us uppity peasants actually make them earn their pay, explaining the whole thing:<\/p>\n

Thursday, the sponsor of the provision said the barrage of criticism may have actually helped.<\/p>\n

“There is nothing more basic than giving someone the option of speaking with their doctor about how they want to be treated in the case of an emergency,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. “I think the outrageous and vindictive attacks may have backfired to help raise awareness about this problem, which is why it’s been kept in the bill.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“And if you get out of line at any more town hall meetings, we’ll institute two <\/em>death panels!\u00a0 Hahahahaha!\u00a0 Because we can!\u00a0 That’s why!<\/em>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Um, yeah.\u00a0 Of course there are. The provision\u00a0[in the latest “Healthcare Bill”]\u00a0allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death. For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5778,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions\/5778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}