Senators may drop the “end of life” provision tucked in the House’s health care reform bill being hotly debated, according to The Wall Street Journal. The provision stipulates that “planning consultations” should take place between senior citizens on Medicare and their physician at least every five years.
Opponents say the provision shows that architects of the health-care overhaul want to ration seniors’ care. Democratic lawmakers say no part of the House bill calls for rationing care. Physician counseling would be voluntary.
But growing complaints over the provision are leading key lawmakers to conclude that the health overhaul should leave out any end-of-life counseling provisions. A group in the Senate Finance Committee that is attempting to craft Congress’s only bipartisan health bill has decided to exclude such a measure, Senate aides said this week.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin made comments on her Facebook page on August 7 criticizing the bill:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
The White House called it a “malicious myth” on the new Health Insurance Reform Reality Check website, launched as part of the White House’s campaign to stop “misinformation being spread by defenders of the status quo.”
Cathy Lynn Grossman at USA Today wants to know if you think Palin’s style is ethical. What do you think?
