Posted from National Review Online

By John C. Goodman — Lies and distortions,” said David Axelrod in an e-mail to 13 million of the Obama faithful plus an untold number of others who were spammed. He was referring to criticisms of the Obama health-care-reform plan—criticisms that are hitting the mark, to judge by opinion polls and the near-riotous responses members of Congress have gotten at town-hall meetings.

Chief among the White House’s irritations is Sarah Palin’s accusation that Obama would create “death panels” to decide who lives and who dies. It is true that none of the bills before Congress calls for the creation of such entities, but does Palin’s statement, however hyperbolic, point toward legitimate concerns? Is there something we should be worried about? The answer is: Yes, we should be very worried.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

President Obama and Speaker Pelosi deny the existence of so-called “death panels” in the health care reform package now underway in Congress, but provisions in the bill call for physician-directed end of life planning, similar to what’s been enacted in England. England’s National Health Service calls the program an “End of Life Scheme.” This article from the UK Telegraph demonstrates the potential pitfalls of such a plan.

The daughter of a stroke victim claims that her father is to be wrongly placed on an NHS scheme for the terminally ill which experts say is causing some patients to die too soon.

By Chris Irvine and Kate Devlin

Rosemary Munkenbeck says her father Eric Troake, who entered hospital after suffering a stroke, had fluid and drugs withdrawn and she claims doctors wanted to put him on morphine until he passed away under a scheme for dying patients called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).

Mrs Munkenbeck, 56, from Bracknell, said her father, who previously said he wanted to live until he was 100, has now said he wants to die after being deprived of fluids for five days.

Along with her sister Jocelyn Troake, 60, who lived in Bermuda until recently moving to Frimley, Surrey, to care full time for her father and her mother Edna, 93, they are convinced their father is a victim of the system.

Last week The Daily Telegraph reported a warning from experts that some patients with terminal illnesses were being wrongly put on the NHS scheme and allowed to die prematurely if they ticked “the right boxes”.

The pathway scheme was developed to improve the care of patients in their dying hours and ensure that they were not being “overmedicalised”.

The scheme encourages doctors and other health care staff to consider removing medication, fluids and other treatments that no longer benefit the patient.

It also recommends discussing the situation with relatives, and if possible, with the patient themselves.

Mrs Munkenbeck said that her father was taken off an intravenous drip last week but she argues that he has as much of a right to life as anyone else. Although a spokesman for Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey says Mr Troake is not on the scheme “at the moment”, it is likely he will be offered a plan of care for dying patients.

“We believe that he has been forced down this route. By withdrawing fluids he is now very weak and there’s no going back from it,” she told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

Read the rest of this story at UK’s Telegraph.

Posted from the London Telegraph

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

Click here to read the rest of the story

Posted from LifeSiteNews.com

Americans worried about President Barack Obama’s health care reforms turning into “death panels” have a new cause for concern: the Obama Administration has mandated that government-run Veterans Affairs hospitals give their patients a handbook on advanced directives including “end-of-life counseling” created by advocates for legal euthanasia.

Last week, LifeSiteNews.com reported that Compassion & Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society, is aggressively promoting a measure (sec. 1233) in the “American Affordable Choices Act of 2009″ (HR 3200) as the “centerpiece” of health care reform. (see coverage here) The proposal is to incentivize doctors and medical professionals to offer “end-of-life” consultations every five years with elderly and infirm patients, and offer them more frequently as a patient’s health condition deteriorates ever closer toward death.

However, opponents fear this could lead to medical professionals initiating conversations that could pressure patients into accepting lower-quality care or into denying themselves life-sustaining treatment, such as antibiotics, or “artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”

Since government would control the rate of medical reimbursement, it could substantially increase the financial incentive for doctors to have these conversations, especially in a possible scenario of dealing with runaway health-care costs. Just last Friday, the Obama Administration revealed government deficit would increase $9 trillion over the next ten years, nearly doubling a national debt already totaling $11.67 trillion.

“There are legitimate concerns that it would give doctors a financial incentive to encourage patients to sign pull-the-plug orders, and that patients would feel pressured to do so by the doctor’s authority,” said Jim Towey, a former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity, in an article written last Tuesday for the Wall Street Journal.

Towey writes that concerned Americans should look no further than the government’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which has an advanced directives manual called “Your Life, Your Choices,” authored by Dr. Robert Pearlman, the chief of ethics evaluation at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care. Towey points out that Pearlman advocated for physician-assisted suicide in 1996 in the US Supreme Court case Vacco v. Quill and also is an advocate for health-care rationing.

According to his VA bio, Pearlman’s chief expertise is “clinical ethics (especially end-of-life care)” and has focused his research on “euthanasia, medical futility, advance care planning, physician-assisted suicide, and relief of patient suffering.”

The 52-page end-of-life planning document, as Towey explained, “presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions,” and also “lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be ‘not worth living.’”

Such scenarios have VA patients consider whether: “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family,” and that the patient’s health condition “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

But Towey points out that “the only resource” on advance directives cited in “Your Life, Your Choices” is the pro-euthanasia organization Compassion & Choices, while faith-based or disability-rights advocates are not included as a resource. LifeSiteNews.com found that the 1997 version included contact info only for Choices in Dying, a predecessor to Compassion and Choices. However, the official VA link to the version updated this year by the Obama Administration is now disabled. LSN found that the site now only features the first edition, but with the last page on “other resources” conveniently missing.  

“When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?” asked Towey, pointing out that the Obama Administration resuscitated the manual after the Bush Administration had banned the VA from giving it to the nation’s wounded and disabled veterans.

Towey added that the VA instructed its doctors last month to discuss “advanced care planning” with all VA patients and “to refer them to ‘Your Life, Your Choices.’”

Dan Kennedy, CEO of Human Life Washington, told LifeSiteNews.com that much of the problem with the massive health-care overhaul of HR 3200 is that the language leaves too much room open for interpretation, and that can have enormous consequences down the road as government bureaus or courts fill in the details.

“People need to realize, that any health care legislation that is passed, though appearing to be compassionate, will not be very detailed,” warned Kennedy. “Unfortunately, the details will be filled in by government bureaucrats in close consultation with Compassion & Choices – the former Hemlock Society. It is true, the devil is in the details.”

“Hopefully, the American people have grown weary of buying on faith what the government has been selling.”

The latest polls reveal that just may be the case. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 54 percent now say that no health care reform this year would be preferable to the current legislation working its way through Congress.

Posted from LifeSiteNews.com

Although President Obama and liberal Congressional Democrats have denounced claims that the health care reform establishes “death panels,” it does not help reassure the American public that the nation’s foremost pro-euthanasia group is actively pushing “end-of-life counseling” as a centerpiece of health-care reforms.

Compassion & Choices, a rebranding of the former Hemlock Society, aggressively lobbies to legalize euthanasia as a “human right” by means of legislation and the judicial system. But the group has revealed that it is a major player behind incorporating a measure (sec. 1233) of the “American Affordable Choices Act of 2009″ (HR 3200) that would pay doctors and medical professionals to offer “end-of-life” consultations every five years with elderly patients or those suffering from chronic or terminal illnesses.

“As Congress debates health insurance reform, Compassion & Choices is leading the charge to make end-of-life choice a centerpiece of any program that emerges,” the euthanasia society declares on its website. “We are working hard to reach our goal to make end-of-life choice a centerpiece of national health insurance reform.”

An e-mail alert sent by the organization’s president Barbara Lee Coombs asked members to join in a telephone call-in with President Obama and faith-based groups asking them to “please encourage him to be vocal and steadfast in his support of the voluntary end-of-life consultation provision for Medicare patients” if they had the opportunity to ask the President a question.   

“Compassion & Choices was the number one organization behind pushing for assisted suicide in Washington State.  They’ve made no secret that this is something they would like to replicate on a national scale,” said Dan Kennedy, CEO of Human Life Washington in an e-mail to LifeSiteNews.com. 

Since Oregon passed laws legalizing physician assisted suicide in 1997, two other states have also legalized assisted suicide: Washington and Montana through the efforts of Compassion & Choices. In Montana, the euthanasia-promoting group had assisted suicide foisted on the state through the edict of a district court; however Montana physicians and the Montana Medical Association refused to participate, saying killing their patients violated physician ethics rooted in the Hippocratic Oath.

Although the White House and its allies in Congress have insisted that talk about sec. 1233 of HR 3200 would lead to “death panels” – a term coined by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to frame how involving government bureaucracy in health care would lead to low-quality care or denied care – has no foundation in fact; but the reality is that euthanasia advocate Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) had a powerful impact upon shaping the legislation, which Compassion & Choices has aggressively promoted.

“I’m certain that they see themselves as the go-to community organization that would partner with the Federal government in end of life counseling,” said Kennedy. “Given that the President has made some disturbing statements on end of life economics, and has listened to their input on health care legislation, we can’t pretend we don’t know what the end-game is.”

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an advocate of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, wrote the “Life Sustaining Treatment Preferences Act of 2009″ (HR 1898), which is considered the primary source of the “advance care planning” sec. 1233 of the health-care reform bill, HR 3200. Both bills incorporate what the euthanasia-promoting Compassion & Choices calls a “Physician Order for Life Sustaining Treatment” (POLST) and pay physicians to initiate conversations with their patients about “the reasons why the development of such an order is beneficial to the individual and the individual’s family and the reasons why such an order should be updated periodically as the health of the individual changes.”

Such advance orders not only include the establishment of living wills, and health-care proxies, but they also delineate for medical professionals under what conditions a patient would wish to refuse treatment, including cardiac or pulmonary resuscitation, going to the hospital, using anti-biotics, and even when to continue “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”

A number of analysts, and not all conservative, have expressed concern that sec. 1233 could lead to senior citizens being pressured into accepting lower quality care from a doctor who is reimbursed to talk with a patient about refusing treatment.

In fact Obama himself has emphasized cutting medical costs through end-of-life counseling. In an April New York Times interview, Obama mentioned how the “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.” Obama stated that the nation must have “a very difficult democratic conversation” about dealing with those costs and advocated the creation of “some independent group that can give you guidance” on the matter.

Such an independent group under HR 3200 would be a board for “Comparative Effectiveness Research” established under the executive branch, and independent of Congressional oversight. But the White House is pushing for the creation of an Independent Medical Advisory Committee, also under the sole direction of the President, that would have the power to completely rewrite Medicare reimbursements without input from Congress.

According to a new NBC News poll, Americans have become increasingly alarmed about the proposed government involvement in the health-care of their loved ones. About 45 percent believe that the government will likely decide when to stop care for the elderly, while 50 percent say it is not likely. 54 percent of respondents also believe the government reforms will lead to a government takeover of health care, while 39 percent disagree.

However, Americans could have a greater cause for alarm to know that not only are euthanasia groups promoting this aspect of health-care reform, but that the Obama Administration has already included them as a resource for “end-of-life counseling” in its Veterans Affairs Department.

Posted from LifeSiteNews

The US Senate has sounded a hasty retreat on “death panels” in health-care reform by striking out the provision on “end-of-life counseling” from the bill.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), announced last week that the Senate Finance Committee has now expunged all “end-of-life” provisions from the Senate version of health-care reform in order “to avoid unintended consequences.”

Grassley admitted in a statement Wednesday that the storm of controversy surrounding the “end-of-life” provisions in detailed in section 1233 of the House version (H.R. 3200) expressed legitimate concerns that the elderly and infirm could end up pressured into lower-quality care or none at all.

“We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely,” said Grassley, “because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

The House version “pays physicians to advise patients about end of life care and rates physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care,” said Grassley, “while at the same time creating a government-run program that is likely to lead to the rationing of care for everyone.”

Grassley said the House version of the “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” in HR 3200 “leaves major issues open to interpretation” and that he could not support it as it went far beyond just “a simple educational campaign.”

However the “end-of-life” provisions could re-emerge, especially as the House may include them in any of the three versions it may pass, and the Senate could agree to them in a compromise bill that reconciles the discrepancies between their respective bills.

The Lady is the Champ: Palin v. Obama

The demise of “end-of-life” counseling has another aspect as it marks Sarah Palin’s first political victory over President Barack Obama since the 2008 election.

The former Alaska Governor’s famous characterization of the House bill as dangerous legislation, paving the way for a bureaucratic “death panel” that would ration care, ignited the firestorm that led to massive scrutiny of the provision. Palin posted her original remarks on Aug. 7th remarks on Facebook, and a week later Grassley announced that the provision was gone.

At a town-hall style gathering in New Hampshire last Wednesday, Obama tried to defuse the controversy over “death panels” with an attempt at humor saying a “rumor” had arisen that Congress wanted to “basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t–it’s too expensive to let her live anymore.”

However Obama failed to regain control of the debate, and by the end of the week, commentators such as the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto said, “it is clear that she has won the debate.” “One can hardly deny that Palin’s reference to ‘death panels’ was inflammatory,” opined Taranto in his “Best of the Web” column. “But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting.”

Palin later blasted Obama for having Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel as his policy advisor on health-care reform. Emanuel outlined a policy for rationing health care called the “Complete Lives System,” which would divert care to individuals with “the potential to live a complete life.” (see coverage)

“Does [Obama] agree with the ‘Complete Lives System,’” asked Palin. “If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on?”

Palin also noted that Emanuel had just told the Washington Times that his “thinking has evolved” on what she called “the question of rationing care to benefit the strong and deny the weak.”

“How convenient that he disavowed his own work only after the nature of his scholarship was revealed to the public at large,” said Palin in comments posted on her Facebook page . 

As of publication time, Palin has added nearly 100,000 more “supporters” on her Facebook profile since her August 7 post.

According to Monday’s Rasmussen presidential daily tracking poll, Fifty percent of voters disapprove of Obama’s performance, while just 49 percent say they at least somewhat approve.

But Americans have lost even more faith in Obama’s health-care reforms, with 54 percent now saying that no health care reform this year would be preferable to the current legislation working its way through Congress.

From the New York Post

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann  — WASHINGTON is all atwit ter about “death panels”: President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping “end of life” counseling language from its bill — and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story “rebutting” the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the “death panel” charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president’s plan.

Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama’s talk of cutting “inefficiencies” and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama’s vision would leave them, many will find that “end of life counseling” necessary and even welcome.

“Reform” would cut care to the elderly in several ways:

* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he’ll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama’s cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.

* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such “Americans” as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources — so today’s facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment — de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

Read the rest of the column at the New York Post