Palin stands by 'death panel' claim, says Obama makes light of US health care reform concerns 55 minutes ago By Matthew Daly, The Associated Press
Spoiler
WASHINGTON - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin refused to retreat from her debunked claim that a proposed health care overhaul would create "death panels," as the growing furor over end-of-life consultations forced a key group of U.S. senators to abandon the idea in their bill.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican and one of six lawmakers negotiating on a Senate bill, said Thursday they had dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration "entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."
In a posting on the social network Facebook titled "Concerning Death Panels," Palin, last year's Republican vice-presidential nominee, argued Wednesday night that the elderly and ailing would be coerced into accepting minimal end-of-life care to reduce health care costs based on the Democratic bill in the House of Representatives.
But there will be no "death panels" under the legislation being considered. In fact, the provision in the bill would allow Medicare, the government-run health care plan for the elderly, to pay doctors for voluntary counselling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill, and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.
The sessions would be covered every five years, more frequently if someone is gravely ill.
The American Medical Association and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization support the provision.
In her posting, Palin wrote: "With all due respect, it's misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients," and added, "It's all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing."
The issue is no longer viable for the six members of the Senate Finance Committee - three Republicans and three Democrats - working on a bipartisan bill, according to Grassley. In a statement, Grassley criticized the House bill, saying there was a difference between a "simple education campaign, as some advocates want," and paying "physicians to advise patients about end-of-life care."
The provisions remain in the House bill, which would have to be reconciled with whatever bill the Senate eventually produces before President Barack Obama could sign it. He has said health care reform is his top domestic priority.
Obama campaigned last year on a promise of offering health care to all Americans. The United States is the only developed country that does not have comprehensive health care plan for all its citizens. Roughly 46 million of America's 300 million people are without health insurance.
Palin's posting came one day after Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that Palin and other critics were not helping the Republicans by tossing out false claims. Portions of the Democratic health care bills "are bad enough that we don't need to be making things up," Murkowski said, invoking a phrase that Palin used in her resignation speech, when she asked the news media to "quit making things up."
Murkowski said she was offended at the death panel terminology. "There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill," she said.
Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who co-sponsored a similar measure in the Senate, said it was "nuts" to claim the bill encourages euthanasia.
And Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who authored the provision on end-of-life counselling, said he is astounded that Palin has not tempered her bleak descriptions of the health care bill.
"It's deliberate at this point," Blumenauer said. "If she wasn't deliberately lying at the beginning, she is deliberately allowing a terrible falsehood to be spread with her name."
He said the measure would block funds for counselling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option, calling references to death panels or euthanasia "mind-numbing."
In another development, The White House is trying to counter health care criticism that is circulating on the Internet by asking supporters to forward a pro-overhaul chain email.
It is the administration's latest attempt to regain control of the health care debate. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod composed an email Thursday with the subject line "something worth forwarding" that lists reasons to support President Barack Obama's agenda - and myths to debunk.
Axelrod writes that opponents of Obama's agenda are relying on tactics including "viral emails that fly unchecked and under the radar, spreading all sorts of lies."
He invites supporters to forward his email to counter claims, including that Obama's plans would lead to rationing, encourage euthanasia or deplete veterans' health care.
- Associated Press Writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.
All I can say about this is I am really glad Palin is still speaking out. Thank God for someone to come out and speak up..... Now where is Hillary in all of this? We all know that she didn't put this kind of health insurance forward when she was running in the primaries.... She wanted all Americans to have the same health insurance as all in Congress and their staff currently enjoy. Will Hillary speak up?
I read the Whistle Blower magazine because I had inadvertantly paid for a subscription without realizing that. So... I have these really right winged articles I get in the mail. I read one article that was clearly articulate about what can happen with a Universal Health Care program.
It was clear that the issues are similar to what I see with my Senior Citizen friends and parents.
My mother told me that she was paying $600 per month for my father's company insurance coverage about 5-7 years ago. They sold their home, while the housing market was still rising and could not afford another afterwards. My father lost his job of over a few decades--making cabinets for houses as a cabinet maker. They had to downsize which meant he had to sell or lose his personal soho wood working equipment. And, of course, they could no longer afford medical. They are not old enough for Medicare and of course not young enough to start over. So my parents have not had medical for some years now. If something happens to one of them, who knows what they can do about it.
My partner is from Poland. I have several friends from Poland over the years. I had heard that they have a "free medical system" but that "it takes a long time to be seen by a specialist". A person can die waiting and only people who have money can get to the specialists. The way they speak about it, it sounds like people with money "bribe" the public doctors. I am not sure if they have private doctors or not.
But the Whistle Blower did spell it all out quite clearly. The deal is that the entire system can go corrupt due to the fact that there are in-house cover-ups at every level from top to bottom. It is much like that issue that occured with the "$1,000 toilets" in the Military and the "Iran-Contra drugs for arms deals". Basically, everyone gets cozy and no one wants to give up their cozyness. So, people get lazy and let the old people poddy in their beds, etc... pretty ugly stuff.
And, that can happen even in commercial operated hospitals. I had some severe pain that was causing me to pass out. I could not eat for some days. I could not walk or stand. A friend made me promise to go to Emergency. I did. I was there laid over myself for ten hours before being seen. I do not call that service. Years ago, a friend of mine in college told me that her uncle who was a professor had asthma and died of an asthma attack in the Emergency room.
Now, I have asthma in my family. I recall how bad my brother had it. I have had a less severe case of it that I got under control. But I know what it feels like to suffocate and not be able to breathe. In one case, I woke in post-op with an asthma attack. I was also in a state of sleep paralysis. I was trying to move or talk to get the nurses attention. My beeping machines began beeping. I recall that even while I could not move, the nurses sprayed a mist down my breathing tube that I had from the surgery. Even though I could not move, I began to breathe. So, I believe that although a person can die from asthma easily, it is also easy to prevent an asthmatic death with medication.
My point: any Health Care System can fail. And, if the System does not have a Checks and Balances it is sure to fail. We know that Capitalism does not work. Only people who work the numbers can capitalize. The pyramid schematics is against the masses gaining more than the elite at the top. We know Communism does not work. Only the ruthless rise to the top to rule over the meek and helpless. We need measures to measure our energy=work=time=money.
The Republicans are at odds with the potential of the government running an industry. They do not care that Capitalism is only for the elite. The elite Republicans do not care. But neither do the elite Democrats.
This week, there was a fire in Santa Cruz County. People were evacuated. One of those people is a friend who stayed at our home. I went to the DMV to register my car last week. I had to get smogged and all that. Well, I was thinking this weekend, "What if I was her? What would the DMV have said if I told them there was a fire and I could not have my smog papers?" Well, I noticed that there is no humanity at the DMV per se. You get in line, take a number, get a print out, pay and get another print out-- a registration. There is no room for being a human who cannot control the fact that she was evacuated out of a fire hazardous zone so that over 2,000 fire personnel from the state could come in and prevent more fire damage to the surrounding forrest. In essence, Universal Health Care could become like the DMV experience.
And. as many people I know who are older than forty know, the government is so computer savvy that many transactions are over the computer, beginning with the phone trees a decade or two back and now the internet. With online services, Health Care could become more like some of the experiments the Veterans Health Care has been doing. At the VA Hospital, I see flyers about a machine that you can get from your doctor. It is like a diary that you report your medical progress directly to your doctor from it. I am not sure how it communicates or networks. But I did hear some veterans talking about it a few months ago. The idea is that you can relay your medical issues to your General Practitioner who can monitor you remotely.
I kid you NOT!!!
That might be where O'bizzaro is getting his ideas. He brought up his TWP Toots. And, We All Noticed that He Never Really Visited Her Until the End. If President O'h could have merely kept in touch with Toots through his Black Berry, I am sure that he could envision that the rest of U.S. could do the same. And, his pea brain mind might even $ave $$$,$$$,$$,$$$. And, that means that Palin is correct: to save money, our government could devise a means to create a panel of experts who choose who can afford to live and die.
Scenario X:
Google experts win a contract to design the networked medical monitoring software and Apple designs the device. Imagine a team of twentyish eggheads devising the analysis of your caloric intake or your cholesterol. According to my chiropractor, when he learned about cholesterol in college, the lower limit was higher than today's lower limit. He has stated that people are being told to lower their cholesterol to below their healthy rates. That is because lowering cholesterol is big business. Well, a Senior friend of mine had been taking one of the cholesterol medications some years back and told me that he had been having memory issues. According to my chiro, we need cholesterol for our neuronal sheaths of our nerves. So, not having enough cholesterol can damage our nervous system, i.e.; memory. I had a similar memory loss issue with taking a nerve pain medication. After losing my mind for almost a year, I opted to feel the pain and stop the medication. Imagine what a group of technologists who calculate numbers only with a computer would design for real humans? They do not even have enough humanity to know that numbers are not perfect. And, they do not even have the medical research data from real humans to piece together a humane device. But O'dear believes that saving money can be had with internet technologies.
Scenario Y:
We keep up the dialogue, keep the ideas flowing, keep democratizing our Health Care. We All need and deserve health care. We all have to earn a living. Nothing is free. We all need to be as healthy as we can be to live in our civilization.
Maybe Palin was given a Messenger so that she could really think out the Health Care situation. She has to see it from the angle of a mother and the special needs child she bore. She is now responsible for choice. But other mothers had and have special needs children and they did not have a choice. It is so interesting that Mrs. Eunice Kennedy-Shriver just died. Her life work dedicated to upgrading the special needs children of the world, to allow them dignity and honor and opportunity to share in our world. Palin begins her own journey to learn about the issues of those children of the world. And, at this time in our history, Palin has a voice that cannot be silenced... unlike the similar mothers of the past but their voices were unheard.
Another bridge between worlds that comes to mind is that the Soldiers of Iraq and Aghganistan are coming home with Traumatic Brain Injuries which do so much damage that leave them feeling helpless. Some of the things that occur are loss of memory, vertigo, heightened sense of sounds, nightmares, confusion, agitation, loss of verbal, logic or reading skills. Others are coming home with Post Traumatic Syndrome which in my research is a nervous system disorder. According "Explaining the Unexplained Illnesses" by Dr. Pall, PhD., PTSD is caused by a chain reaction of neuro-stressors which can become a chronic disease. They used to call it, "a nervous breakdown." We have a few generations of people coming home changed--some for life.
Our society will have to deal with the impact those people will have on their families and communities. We can no longer hide our wounder workers and soldiers at home in our private lives. Too many people are disabled. Most people know a disabled person. Many people are taking care of a loved one who is disabled for some reason or another. Last but not least are the Baby Boomers who are aging. The ones I know are alive and well. And, I cannot imagine that any one of them would go to an "Old Folks" home.
Americans have seen those operations. We really need to think about what we don't like and think about how we can change the way we treat our loved ones and how we want our loved ones to treat us. We need to really voice our fears and objections--feel our way through solving these issues. We are living and dying creatures. We need to feel out every emotional issue about the Health Care Systems that we want to buy into. After all, we are paying for it.
