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Friday, September 11, 2009

Politics Will Blumenauer's End-of-Life Idea Get Axed?

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:26 AM

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  • BT Livermore
When healthcare hysteric Betsy McCaughey graced the Daily Show back in August and claimed the infamous "death panel" clause was right there on page 425 of the healthcare bill, she pointed out a passage written by none other than Portland's Congressional Rep Earl Blumenauer. When I reported on the Oregon roots of the national death panel controversy back then, it looked like the liars were losing and Blumenauer's common sense idea to pay doctors for the time spent discussing end-of-life options would stay in the healthcare bill.

But now, after the flames of the town halls have died down, Blumenauer's end-of-life care clause might get quietly killed after all. In an Oregonian article this morning, Earl B. signaled that he was willing to call it quits on fighting for his policy. From the piece: "Blumenauer said he could vote for a bill without his provision if it address [sic] the primary, and larger issues — covering most, if not all, of the 47 million uninsured people in America and providing mechanisms to control spiraling health care costs."

If even the end-of-life care clause's main sponsor is okaying support of the bill without that section, things can't be going well for the idea up on Capitol Hill. Maybe he's doing the right thing politically—the end-of-life care clause is really a tiny piece of a much larger bill—but what the defeat would say is troubling: Congress and the Senate bowed to whacko town hall liars when making an important policy decision.

UPDATE 12:08 PM: Representative Blumenauer himself called just a minute ago to clarify that despite saying he'll support a healthcare bill that does not include end-of-life care coverage, he is still pushing to include the significant clause in the healthcare bill. "I have no intention of allowing something that makes so much sense for senior citizens and their families to be scuttled because people are lying about it. I don't know who go what impression but I'm not letting it go," says Blumenauer, adding that he had three meetings yesterday on this issue. "This is not the single most important thing in the bill, there are several pieces I'm working on that I think are more important, but I'm not going to make it easy for them to rip it out." Good to hear!

 

Comments (7) RSS

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1
Just like Baucus and Conrad today announced they're going to address Joe Wilson's bogus demagoguery re: illegal immigrants by adding a provision to the bill. All these moves do is allow the wingers to proclaim "See? Why would they drop this or change that if we weren't right all along?"

I had really hoped Democrats would stop being stupid.
Posted by The One True b!X on September 11, 2009 at 11:19 AM · Report
2
End of life planning is so obvious. Who wants to die for months in a hospital connected to a million tubes away from family?
Posted by R on September 11, 2009 at 12:03 PM · Report
3
Why was my comment deleted?

If the law includes government sponsored "end of life" care and assisted suicide help, "death panels" are not a lie, then are they?
Someone please point cite one of the lies.
Posted by D on September 11, 2009 at 12:42 PM · Report
4
The law doesn't include assisted suicide help. That's never been in there.

The proposal was to let doctors discuss end of life care if the patient asked for it. The lie was that Palin and others said it would be compulsory, even if the patient didn't ask for it. Seems a pretty clear cut lie to me.
Posted by Stu on September 11, 2009 at 1:25 PM · Report
5
The point being made was government bureaucrats making decisions in regard to the issue rather than doctors.
And if people were fined for not having insurance, that would mandate the govt option=compulsory, kind of a leap to follow, I know, but I think that was the original logic.
Posted by D on September 11, 2009 at 1:43 PM · Report
6
Erm, neither government bureaucrats nor doctors would make decisions about whether the patient received end-of-life care. The patient would. It's an increase in patient choice, not a reduction, nothing's being forced on anyone. And (whatever the conservative nutjobs and their health-insurance-company paymasters want you to believe) nobody would be denied treatment if they wanted it.

It's possible to come up with problems with the proposed plan. It's actually quite easy. But the Republicans prefer to just make incendiary stuff up instead, knowing that their followers won't bother to check whether it has any basis in reality.
Posted by Stu on September 11, 2009 at 1:50 PM · Report
7
Perhaps you should say "government bureaucrats." Because obviously your standard HMO contains it's fair share of non-governmental bureaucrats.

Of course it's kind of a silly argument, since non-governmental bureaucrat are more than happy to decide which procedures you qualify for and which you don't. So... what's the problem again?
Posted by atomic on September 11, 2009 at 2:24 PM · Report

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