The temperature’s heading toward 100 in Washington, and things are getting hotter in the debate over health care too, even with Congress out of town for the traditional August recess and President Barack Obama in Mexico for the so-called Three Amigos summit.
Taking aim at the orchestrated — or not — attacks on congressional supporters of the Obama health care plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer struck back in an opinion piece in USAToday: “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.”
The two top House Democrats aren’t commenting in a vacuum. Obama’s Saturday radio and Web address focused on the “outlandish” tactics of some opponents of health care reform.
That followed a note by Sarah Palin — ex-governor, ex-vice-presidential candidate but still somehow claiming attention in Washington — on Facebook last week, alleging that Obama’s health care plan would have what she called a “death panel” that would let bureaucrats decide who would be “worthy of health care.” Palin, who has slammed the media for focusing on her children, said her “baby with Down Syndrome” would have to come before such a bureaucratic panel.
ABC News asked, reasonably, what Palin was talking about when she mentioned a “death panel,” and was referred to HR3200 p. 425, “Advance Care Planning Consultation” about end-of-life care. No specific mention of any death panel.
The non-partisan Factcheck.org site says its e-mail inbox has been “exploding” recently with queries asking whether this provision encourages suicide at the end of life. The answer, Factcheck.org said, is no. “Page 425 does deal with counseling sessions for seniors, but it is far from recommending a “Logan’s Run” approach to Medicare spending. In fact, it requires Medicare to cover counseling sessions for seniors who want to consider their end-of-life choices –- including whether they want to refuse or, conversely, require certain types of care. The claim that the bill would ‘push suicide’ is a falsehood.”
Will this be the end of the discussion? Our considered opinion: not a chance!
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credits: REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, July 22, 2009, Washington DC)
REUTERS/Nathaniel Wilder (Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009. Fairbanks, Alaska)
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getplaning. Your “Reuters” story says to me that Mexico is a destination for “good deals”, whether it be for a vacation, inexpensive housing on the ocean, trinkets and yes, even health care. All you prove is that people use Mexico to get good deals, no matter what the reason. That won’t stop anytime soon.
The second thing it tells me is that the Mexican clinics will be overflowing with people when they are denied health care in the United States with a “universal” system. When the government health care “accountant” says you can’t have a procedure because you are too old or it is too expensive for the government to pay, you can bet people will flock to Mexico like never before. It will make today’s “good deal” seekers pale in comparison.
So thank you for bringing up an option that will not only enrich Mexico, but will provide the medical care people younger than 15 and older than 40 won’t get under the plan the administration and congress want to force on us.
- Posted by TCHere’s your truth, TC. Facts, not opinion.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticN ews/idUSTRE57C40C20090813
- Posted by getplaningNice try getplaning. Thank you for the truth Susan Bracken.
- Posted by TCIf Canada’s single-payer system is such a disappointment, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Is Canada a socialist country? If Canadians don’t like their health care system, why haven’t they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?
The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada’s single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. So your arguments are patently false, as is your accusation that poster Janelle and the other Canadians contributing to this thread are paid by SEIU or ACORN. Right wing paranoia at its best.
But your argument that people are flooding into the United States for our superior healthcare is also patently false. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons reports that as many 500,000 people per year seek care overseas. How many people from Canada come to the United States each year to pay for services? A few, to be sure, those who can afford it.
- Posted by getplaningI disagree with the idea that Sarah’s fears are unfounded.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is Obama’s policy advisor on health care reform, the special adviser for health care at the Office of Management and Budget. He is also a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research that is taking a preliminary look at what procedures will be covered on whom with an eye towards cost cutting.
Please look at this quote from this man, and try to tell me Palin’s fears are unfounded. He explicitly states that care should not be guaranteed for someone with Palin’s daughter’s condition, downs syndrome:
“Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example Is is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.”
http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Where_Civic_Rep ublicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Me et.pdf
Source: “Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet”, hastings center, 1996 (see link).
Another quote:
“When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated”
source: ‘Principles of allocation of scarce medical interventions’, January 31, 2009
For details about how this fits in with Obama’s “death panel”, look at this section from a wallstreet journal article:
http://sbk.online.wsj.com/article/SB1000 1424052970203609204574312451234786752.ht ml
McCaughey: It means reductions in hip replacements, knee replacements, bypass surgery, angioplasty…
Gigot: Doctors are not going to stop prescribing these things.
McCaughey: In the stimulus package was a provision for computers to be in doctors’ offices and hospitals at bedside–computers that would deliver protocols to doctors electronically on what the government deems cost-effective and appropriate care. There will be penalties for doctors who are not meaningful users of this system. The president appointed Dr. David Blumenthal national coordinator of health information technology, and he’s going to oversee ensuring that doctors obey these protocols. In The New England Journal of Medicine he wrote an article describing how he’s going do it.
Gigot: Won’t Congress push back?
McCaughey: Well, that’s why Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, part of the White House–went to Congress earlier this week and asked for permission to remove those decisions from Congress. He asked Congress to delegate the authority to make these decisions about what Medicare covers and how doctors are paid instead to a body outside of Congress, either MedPAC–a body that already exists, an advisory board–or a council created within the White House. [...]
I don’t believe we can count on the doctors that would be appointed to this to make the right decisions because, for example, the doctors that the president has already chosen to be his chief health advisers are ardent advocates of limiting care for the elderly. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, for example–brother of president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel– has written that the elderly should get less care, that Americans are too enamored with high-tech care, and that people who have incurable illnesses–and he uses the example of dementia–should not be guaranteed health care because they no longer contribute to society.
(end quotation)
—–
More evidence that Sarah has good reason to worry can be seen in Obama’s choice of “Science Czar”, John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Obama’s Science Czar wrote a book explicitly advocating forced abortions and mass sterilization. See:
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/
- Posted by Susan BrackenActually, you are speaking through people you don’t know. I am speaking about people I know who personally experience the disappointments and rejection of health care in Canada. I see and visit with my relatives and see what they experience and they all (okay there is always someone who doesn’t care either way…) say we don’t want to go down that road. They aren’t praising their so called FREE health care. Also, they love the letters from the government saying that because they reach a a milestone in their age that they are no longer covered for a whole host of procedures. Wow…such a wonderful system they have.
It doesn’t matter what you think because you continue to prove your ignorance of the reality of government health care and the polls. People are not with you in your thinking no matter how much you try to twist the numbers. The majority of Americans agree with everything I have been saying.
BTW, there is no way of knowing if Janelle is Canadian or not. I suspect she works for ACORN or a union and is being paid to spread lies about socialistic medicine.
- Posted by TC