Day: August 12, 2009

Read the Bill: Complete Text of Section of House Bill with Purported ‘Death Panel’ Provision

Jon Ponder

It’s a dead cinch that none of the folks screaming “Read the bill!” at members of Congress at health-care reform town hall meetings this month have actually read the bills themselves.

Top Republicans, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, House Minority Leader John Boehner, former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey and others, are lying when they claim a provision in Section 1233, “Advance Care Planning Consultation,” sets up “death panels.”

By not reading the House bills — in particular, the one called “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” — town hall disrupters who have also been railing about a purported provision in the bill that establishes “death panels” have revealed themselves to be hypocrites as well as willing dupes in a campaign by the medical lobbies and Republican leaders to kill reform in order to protect health-care profits.

Top Republicans, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, House Minority Leader John Boehner, former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey and others — and just today Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa — are lying about the contents of Section 1233, “Advance Care Planning Consultation,” which they say requires elderly and infirm people to be evaluated by “death panels” every five years.

What the bill actually does is extend payments to Medicare recipients who seek professional counseling on end-of-life issues like setting up a living will and issuing “do not resuscitate” instructions to their families.

Facts do not matter to right-wingers, of course, but normal Americans who might take the Tea-baggers’ and Birthers’ venting about euthanasia at face value instead of seeing it for what it really is — rage over having a black president — need to know the truth.

The full text of Section 1233 follows:

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Evolution of the GOP ‘Death Panel’ Big Lie, from ‘Evil’ to ‘Nuts’

Jon Ponder

The GOP’s false claim that the House health care bill includes a provision that would set up a death panel that would decide whether the elderly and handicapped should receive treatment was propagated initially by Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York, who is a professional shill for the health-care industry. She first floated the lie in radio interview with Fred Thompson, the right-wing former television actor:

And one of the most shocking things I found in this bill, and there were many, is on Page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care. And by the way, the bill expressly says that if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period — if you get a cancer diagnosis, for example — you have to go through that session again. All to do what’s in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and cut your life short. These are such sacred issues of life and death. Government should have nothing to do with this. [fredthompsonshow.com, interview archives, 07/16/09]

None of that is true. First of all, just imagine the logistics of “requiring” tens of millions of Medicare recipients to undergo counseling. The staffing costs alone would likely exceed whatever cost benefit that might be derived from euthanizing that many people. Secondly, euthanasia — also known as assisted suicide — is illegal in every state but Oregon, Washington and Montana.

What page 425 in the House bill — more formally known as Section 1233 — actually does is expand Medicare coverage to pay for counseling when people choose to set up living wills and make other decisions about end-of-life issues.

On July 23, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) helped spread the lie in an offical statement from the House Republican leadership:

This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law… [It] is a throwback to 1977, when the old Department of Health Education and Welfare proposed federal promotion of living wills for cost-savings purposes described as ‘enormous.’ At that time, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago decried this effort by saying: “The message is clear: government can save money by encouraging old people to die a little sooner than they otherwise would. Instead of being regarded with reverence, and cherished, human life is subject in this view to a utilitarian cost-benefit calculus and can be sacrificed to serve fiscal policy and the sacred imperative of trimming a budget.”

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