(no subject)
Just want to clear up some misinformation being promulgated by the President of the United States, who is either lying or abysmally uninformed about the piece of legislation for which he's out there trying to gin up support. Too bad he shut down the "flag" e-mail address: I'd report him.
First off - if you're wondering why I'm so fired up about this, it's because it is an unconscionable intrusion of government into our freedom when there is no good reason for it. And, as I continue on with my reading of the bill, you'll see that - I'll get to the part soon where they have real-time access to your bank account. I was just as fired up about HillaryCare (though I didn't have the details on that that I have about this: HillaryCare was done under cover of darkness and secrecy), but none of you knew me, then.
On the Michael Smerconish radio show the other day, Obama said this: "I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, 'Look, let's not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, '94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook."
Well, Republicans aren't the ones stalling this. Republicans can't stop a damn thing. It's DEMOCRATS that Obama's got to get on his side. So a) he's either lost control of his party or b) he KNOWS this thing is a dog and doesn't want responsibility for it laid solely at the feet of his own party. IMHO, it's a little of both. However, he's right about one thing. It worked in 1994, and it'll work in 2010. But that's not why the GOP is opposing it. The GOP is opposing it because the people don't want it now any more than they wanted it then - less, in fact, because, as I mentioned, we know more about it.
Onward.
The President has addressed a few different items in his town halls and during the "wee wee" speech (did TOTUS give him the "wee wee"? If so, they MIGHT want to check its program). Death panels, government takeover of health care, care for illegal immigrants, abortion. I'm going to tackle the death panels now, and, hopefully, get to the others over the weekend.
On "death panels":
Oh, they were in there, all right:
TheHill.com - Finance Committee to drop end-of-life provision
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia.
If they weren't in the bill in the first place, how could they be dropped?
Okay, they're not called "death panels" in the bill (and Sarah Palin’s coining of the phrase is probably what got them yanked in the first place), and that term is, admittedly, a bit of an exaggeration. They are called "SEC. 1233. ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION." This begins on page 424 and continues through page 434, and it is amazingly detailed about what exactly is included under the header “advance planning.” I mean, it goes into MINUTE detail about the various options that could arise in the discussions, and there is no doubt that there would be pressure exerted on individuals. There's nothing in the minutia about actually trying to SAVE your life.
Link to the bill so you can look it up yourself.
And, to quote Charles Krauthammer, “To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat.”
Though Krauthammer is a little too generous, IMHO. The bill does, in fact, SPECIFICALLY state, Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such consultation shall include the following (and this is where it goes into the minutia which you can read yourself, but it’s stuff like living wills, hospice, and palliative care - not the latest life-saving and extending technology and medicines).
As Krauthammer points out When you are old, infirm and lying in the ICU with pseudomonas pneumonia and deciding whether to (a) go through the long antibiotic treatment or (b) allow what used to be called "the old man's friend" to take you away, the doctor will ask you at that time what you want for yourself -- no matter what piece of paper you signed five years earlier.
You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end -- when facing death -- not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer's office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment. {emphasis Krauthammer’s.}
And, when you come right down to it, the Obama administration is already pushing this kind of end-of-life decision-making - on veterans. In a VA booklet - “Your Life, Your Choices” first introduced in 1997, withdrawn by the Bush Administration and re-introduced just last month under Obama, veterans are asked leading questions about what circumstances might bring them to decide that life was no longer worth living, including living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” No, the book does not go so far as to advocate assisted suicide, but neither does it encourage veterans to find solutions to the factors that make their lives intolerable.
As Jim Towey says in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
So, maybe they’re not “death panels,” but neither are they meant to invoke the human spirit and encourage people to live life to its fullest regardless of their difficulties, and certainly they're not intended to help people explore medical alternatives to, you know, death. Obama himself has stated that "maybe it's better to give them the pain pill rather than the surgery" and that judging on "spirit" would be too subjective. He said this maybe a month or two ago to a woman who asked about her own mother, who'd gotten a pacemaker at age 100 and was still going strong at 105, when he basically admitted that the government would likely not have approved the surgery. Of course, pain pills do nothing to ameliorate the condition a pacemaker solves.
That takes us to the government takeover aspect of the plan, and I'll address that next.
First off - if you're wondering why I'm so fired up about this, it's because it is an unconscionable intrusion of government into our freedom when there is no good reason for it. And, as I continue on with my reading of the bill, you'll see that - I'll get to the part soon where they have real-time access to your bank account. I was just as fired up about HillaryCare (though I didn't have the details on that that I have about this: HillaryCare was done under cover of darkness and secrecy), but none of you knew me, then.
On the Michael Smerconish radio show the other day, Obama said this: "I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, 'Look, let's not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, '94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook."
Well, Republicans aren't the ones stalling this. Republicans can't stop a damn thing. It's DEMOCRATS that Obama's got to get on his side. So a) he's either lost control of his party or b) he KNOWS this thing is a dog and doesn't want responsibility for it laid solely at the feet of his own party. IMHO, it's a little of both. However, he's right about one thing. It worked in 1994, and it'll work in 2010. But that's not why the GOP is opposing it. The GOP is opposing it because the people don't want it now any more than they wanted it then - less, in fact, because, as I mentioned, we know more about it.
Onward.
The President has addressed a few different items in his town halls and during the "wee wee" speech (did TOTUS give him the "wee wee"? If so, they MIGHT want to check its program). Death panels, government takeover of health care, care for illegal immigrants, abortion. I'm going to tackle the death panels now, and, hopefully, get to the others over the weekend.
On "death panels":
Oh, they were in there, all right:
TheHill.com - Finance Committee to drop end-of-life provision
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia.
If they weren't in the bill in the first place, how could they be dropped?
Okay, they're not called "death panels" in the bill (and Sarah Palin’s coining of the phrase is probably what got them yanked in the first place), and that term is, admittedly, a bit of an exaggeration. They are called "SEC. 1233. ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION." This begins on page 424 and continues through page 434, and it is amazingly detailed about what exactly is included under the header “advance planning.” I mean, it goes into MINUTE detail about the various options that could arise in the discussions, and there is no doubt that there would be pressure exerted on individuals. There's nothing in the minutia about actually trying to SAVE your life.
Link to the bill so you can look it up yourself.
And, to quote Charles Krauthammer, “To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat.”
Though Krauthammer is a little too generous, IMHO. The bill does, in fact, SPECIFICALLY state, Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such consultation shall include the following (and this is where it goes into the minutia which you can read yourself, but it’s stuff like living wills, hospice, and palliative care - not the latest life-saving and extending technology and medicines).
As Krauthammer points out When you are old, infirm and lying in the ICU with pseudomonas pneumonia and deciding whether to (a) go through the long antibiotic treatment or (b) allow what used to be called "the old man's friend" to take you away, the doctor will ask you at that time what you want for yourself -- no matter what piece of paper you signed five years earlier.
You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end -- when facing death -- not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer's office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment. {emphasis Krauthammer’s.}
And, when you come right down to it, the Obama administration is already pushing this kind of end-of-life decision-making - on veterans. In a VA booklet - “Your Life, Your Choices” first introduced in 1997, withdrawn by the Bush Administration and re-introduced just last month under Obama, veterans are asked leading questions about what circumstances might bring them to decide that life was no longer worth living, including living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” No, the book does not go so far as to advocate assisted suicide, but neither does it encourage veterans to find solutions to the factors that make their lives intolerable.
As Jim Towey says in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
So, maybe they’re not “death panels,” but neither are they meant to invoke the human spirit and encourage people to live life to its fullest regardless of their difficulties, and certainly they're not intended to help people explore medical alternatives to, you know, death. Obama himself has stated that "maybe it's better to give them the pain pill rather than the surgery" and that judging on "spirit" would be too subjective. He said this maybe a month or two ago to a woman who asked about her own mother, who'd gotten a pacemaker at age 100 and was still going strong at 105, when he basically admitted that the government would likely not have approved the surgery. Of course, pain pills do nothing to ameliorate the condition a pacemaker solves.
That takes us to the government takeover aspect of the plan, and I'll address that next.