White House: End of Life Planning/Death Panels? Blame Bush.

White House Tries To Quiet Revived Talk Of Death Panels
The Hill: The Obama Administration is trying to quiet talk about so-called “Death Panels” after The New York Times reported Sunday that a new Medicare Regulation includes incentives for end-of-life-care planning. The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new Healthcare Reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disab...

Medicare Regulation Revives End-of-Life Planning As Part of Obamacare
Monday, December 27, 2010 By Staff, Associated Press Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, rests her arm on an autographed copy of the Democrats’ Health Care bill after it passed the House on Sunday, March 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Washington (AP) - A new health Regulation issued this month offers Medicare recipients voluntary end-of-life planning, which Democrats dropped -- under pressure -- from their Health Care overhaul last year. The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary...

Obamacare and Soft Tyranny [Reader Post]
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its Victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. To great derision, Sarah Palin was critical of ObamaCare in August of 2009 in Face...

President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation
Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama’s Death Panels are back, this time via the president’s fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I’ve decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over. You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in ObamaCare. You might also remember the political fi...

Do we really need 'death panels' to do the obvious?
The NY Times says the White House is moving forward with the idea, including it in Medicare coverage through Regulation. Starting early next year, doctors will get paid to advise patients on "End-Of-Life Care." Supporters of the regulation have stayed mum, fearful of provoking a reaction from the Republicans similar to the "Death Panel" fury from the summer of 2009. Opponents have said that such a policy could encourage doctors to advise patients to end their lives prematurely. You mean, as oppo...

President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation
Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama's Death Panels are back, this time via the president's fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I've decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over. You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in ObamaCare. You might also remember the political firestorm these death...

The Sunbird
Doctors will soon be able to receive Medicare payments for end-of-life planning. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit. Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make Health Care decisions for themselves. This is of course completel...

News links: Death panels return, Medicare to fund end-of-life counseling
Hawaii’s new Gov. Neil Abercrombie was a friend of Obama’s parents when the president was a baby. Abercrombie wants to prove once and for all that Obama was born in the United States and has a right to hold office. Politico>>> During the battle to get Obama’s Health Care bill through Congress, opponents — notably Sarah Palin — nearly scuttled the effort by accusing Democrats of supporting “Death Panels.” Now, the administration is quietly funding 

Medicare will cover advance care planningGood for Democrats and for Republicans, too
Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make Health Care decisions for themselves. While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama Administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the Regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals wit...

This Week's Health Industry News
With the Congress in adjournment and many business people taking off the time between holidays, we do not expect any substantive health industry news this week. But we could be surprised. Take, for instance, the news reported Sunday by our colleague Robert Pear in Washington. The Obama Administration, through an administrative rule, is resurrecting the notion of end-of-life planning services for older Americans — the same sort of planning that was falsely characterized as “Death Panels”

Here We Go, All Over Again
Several Democratic members of Congress, led by Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, had urged the administration to cover end-of-life planning as a service offered under the Medicare wellness benefit. A national organization of hospice care providers made the same recommendation. Mr. Blumenauer, the author of the original end-of-life proposal, praised the rule as “a step in the right direction.” “It will give people more ...

End-of-Life Decisions and the Bureaucracy
When I learned today that the federal Bureaucracy had promulgated a rule compensating physicians for the time they spend counseling patients on end-of-life health-care decisions, I wasn’t surprised. A similar provision was dropped from the ObamaCare bill, but anyone who understands the profoundly bureaucratic nature of contemporary government knew that that was not necessarily the end of it. The 2,700-page law is destined — if it is not rolled way back or repealed — to generate...

GretaWire slide show
Is the NYT right, are these "Death Panels?" Read the blog entry "death panels" and post your view of the article...and the Controversy.  Also, feel free to comment about the national ... Get Greta's daily update, with all the latest videos, news, and commentary from her blog! Enter your e-mail address below to sign up now. Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune Greta Van Susteren is the host of On the Record at 10 p.m. ET weeknights on Fox News Channel. ...

Berwick and Sebelius sneak end-of-life counseling incentives in through regulation
You don't remember voting for, or against, Dr. Donald Berwick or Kathleen Sebelius? That's because they were appointed and confirmed hastily or not confirmed at all. And now they're able to accomplish through regulatory fiat what they couldn't get through Congress, even with a playing field tilted steeply in their favor. Section 1233 of HR 3200 was one of the most Controversial features of ObamaCare. Though it was passed by the House, it was dropped from the final bill after critics from the ...

White House Terms Permanent Detention Without Trial Regrettable
Speaking today on CNN’s State of the Union, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted that the administration views its own decision to hold Detainees permanently without trial “regrettable.” At the same time, Gibbs insisted that the detentions were vital because a lot of the Detainees could not be successfully prosecuted so the president is going to simply not bother with the effort of trying to build a case against them. In January 2009, President Obama promised to ...

Mike Pence: Fiscal Hawk, Socon
Commenters to the Barbour piece below note that we shouldn't let the media chose our Candidates for us. It is in that spirit that I bring you the other big news story today about a probable GOP 2012 candidate: this Wall Street Journal puff-piece on Indiana Rep. Mike Pence. Mr. Pence usually draws under 5% in voter surveys testing the emerging 2012 field. But the excitement he's stirred among a swath of Conservatives—he won a Straw Poll at the prominent Values Voter Summit in September—points bo..

Sarah Palin Was Right. . .
 . . . . about ObamaCare’s “Death Panels”?!?!? From the Administration’s paper of record: When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from Legislation to overhaul the Health Care system. But the Obama Administration will achieve the same goal by Regulation, starting Jan. 1. Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patien

Obama death panels, advance health care directives and end of life planning
 The so-called "Obama Death Panels" are back in the news. Under new health regulations recently issued by the Obama Administration, Medicare recipients will be offered voluntary end-of-life planning, and an opportunity to issue advance Health Care directives. Democrats, lacking the courage of their convictions, dropped plans for similar measures from last year's Health Care reform Legislation. Uniformed and deliberately misleading criticism by Republicans, such as former half-term Alaska Go...

10 Reasons to Feel Optimistic About the Future
As 2010 comes to a close, the country seems to be finding some solid footing. After more than three years of what seemed like an economic free-fall, there is a sense that we’ve seen the worst. Maybe we’re not moving in the right direction just yet. But we’ve stopped moving in the wrong direction. Consumer sentiment is a key barometer, and shoppers came out in numbers big enough to support a respectable Holiday Season. Not a boom, mind you, but a better showing than we’v...

Allocation and Rationing
In the renewed discussion of “Death Panels” for government-controlled Health Care, some ask how the government distribution of scarce medical resources is really any different from the Private Sector doing so. Either way, you’ve got a small group of people – politicians or Insurance company executives – deciding who receives treatment. Under a free-market system, rich people get the best treatments, because they can afford to pay for them. How is that “better...

Open thread...
Is the NYT right, are these "Death Panels?" Read the blog entry "death panels" and post your view of the article...and the Controversy.  Also, feel free to comment about the national ... ...

Let's hope that 78% of those who voted below are DEAD WRONG
Is the NYT right, are these "Death Panels?" Read the blog entry "death panels" and post your view of the article...and the Controversy.  Also, feel free to comment about the national ... ...

How Obamacare keeps families trapped in poverty
In order to help pay for the $20 billion "Doc Fix" in Medicare payment rates, the government now has an “exchange recapture subsidy,” which basically allows the government to compel low-income families to return any excess Subsidies they might have gotten from ObamaCare. Shikha Dalmia has a must read piece at The Daily Beast on the kind of perverse incentives this creates: When the government hands out subsidies, it will use a household’s income in the previous year as the basi...

OMGLOLWTF WHUT?!
Republicans have made clear that cutting spending is their top priority. Incoming House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is promising weekly votes on Spending Cuts, and conservative Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma warned of a national catastrophe if the Deficit doesn't get reduced. "There will not be one American that will not be called to sacrifice" under the needed spending cuts to deal with the deficit, Coburn said on "Fox News Sunday." While acknowledging that "those that are more well-t...

Jesus would be a liberal, right?
On Thursday night I appeared on “The Ed Schultz Show” on MSNBC, answering Newt Gingrich's latest attack on the jobless by suggesting Newt watch “It's a Wonderful Life” and reread the teachings of Jesus, which I offered to send him as my Christmas Present. President Obama is a man of quiet but deep Christian faith. Isn't it odd that every time the president quotes Scripture, he is met by angry rightists who seem to hate (hate is not too strong