Obama learns from Nazi Germany: Sneaks Death Panels Back Into Obamacare

[Guest guest]

Obama

Sneaks “Death Panels†Back Into Obamacare; Does End-Run Around Congress January

3, 2011

“If they would rather die they had better do it, and

decrease the surplus population.†— Ebenezer Scrooge in

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Palin was right.

Boehner — make that Speaker-elect of the House Boehner — was right. While

Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and presumably

not paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story

ironically dated Christmas Day — a holiday celebrating the birth of the

Prince of Peace — reported the following: Obama

Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir WASHINGTON

— 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. In other words, the 2009 charge

leveled by former Alaska Governor Palin and the then-House

Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to set up what Palin

termed government “death panels†— panels that Boehner said would set

the government on the road to euthanasia — is no longer a charge. It’s reality. By executive fiat —

in this case a new Medicare rule issued by Obama Medicare chief Dr.

Berwick. Palin,

who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009 during the

health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning

political attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this

about the prospect of death panels: And who

will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and

the disabled, of course. 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,â€

whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. Her

famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly dropped by

Congress. Now, with

Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring Washington

momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its

death panel goal anyway, as the Times now admits. Says the paper of the

new Christmas death panel regulation that replaces medical science and

voluntary private judgment with the inevitable pressure of politicized

health care: Congressional

supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They

fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans

seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the

Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the

critically ill. Which is

another way of saying something else: Governor Palin has been

vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated. And

Palin’s critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all

over their faces. Obama’s Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most

hotly controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a

conservative ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress.

With no less than Boehner himself taking the gavel from Pelosi as

the new Speaker of the House. What does

this new rule say and do, exactly? It

inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as

Palin said was Obama’s intention. Not, as was true of its original

legislative formulation, every five years. But annually. No one of

any sense objects to an individual and doctor having end-of-life

discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the

Obama administration and its obsession for control wants the government

to incentivize the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a

system that on its face pressures the most deeply vulnerable of

Americans in the most Orwellian of terms to end their lives. Control

and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step

philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal.

And the Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on

Christmas Day when it no one is looking, is a perfect example — if

hardly the only example — of how the Obama Administration views its

role. Control and pressure. Pressure and control. Versus

the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and freedom. Says the

Times of the Obama Administration’s justification for its secretive

move to mandate death panels by regulatory fiat: In this

case, the administration said research had shown the value of

end-of-life planning. Research?

What research could possibly justify a government-sponsored annual

attempt to pressure a poor, disabled, or elderly American into

believing that they would be better off dead because they’re costing

society too much money? British

research. Says the Times: “Advance

care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family

satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving

relatives,†the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare

regulation, quoting research published this year in the British Medical

Journal.†You read

that right. British

research is being cited in the preamble of this Medicare death panel

rule as a justification for the new rule — a stunning turn of events

that will surely launch a firestorm over trying to remodel the American

health care system after the hotly criticized British health care

system. A system that makes no pretense of politically rationed health

care. Part of

the furor launched over Palin’s remarks was the discovery by millions

of frightened Americans that Obama health care bureaucrats admired the

British health care system — where the government in fact rations

health care on a political basis and decides who should live or die

based on what is called the “QALY†— Quality-Adjusted Life Year. This

has been discussed previously in this space — in fact just over a week

before Governor Palin wrote her Facebook statement. It has also been

discussed by health care consultant Catron here where he

explained how the QALY system worked. In

Catron’s words: “A year of perfect health, for example, is given a

value of 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and

1. If you are confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be

valued at half that of your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or

deaf, you also score low. All that remains is to assign a specific

dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your life has a price tag.†Princeton’s

controversial Dr. Singer, a liberal and big believer in the

British health care system, happily related the British politicization

of medical decisions in a New York Times Magazine article during all of

this, an instance in which “Britain’s National Institute for Health and

Clinical Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National

Health Service should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer.â€

Why? The government said it was too expensive and therefore simply

denied the drug. This in turn led to a furious reaction even from

stiff-upper-lip Brits with charges their government was “immoral†and

willing to let patients die. Grudgingly,

the drug was eventually approved. But not before one angry British

woman, whose husband’s life was at stake, angrily asked: “What price is

life?†As this

is written the Obama Food and Drug Administration is now taking

Americans down this same path, rejecting the breast cancer drug Avastin

with what many are citing as unbelievable science — but very believable

political concerns that the drug is, in the bureaucrats’ view, too

expensive. Thereby inserting the judgment of political bureaucrats for

medical science — and the freedom of patients to order the drug. Here’s

this from the Heartland Institute: According

to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, the FDA’s

decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on

the expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as

$90,000 per year for a single patient. The FDA

claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin’s cost and was based

solely on the drug’s medical effectiveness,†Pipes said. “This isn’t

believable. Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast

cancer. Avastin is the last hope for many not to meet that fate. While

the drug is costly, it often provides immense benefits to patients. Somewhere

an American woman with breast cancer is surely saying the same thing as

her British counterpart: “What price is life?†Singer

had an answer. Really. Said the famous Bioethics professor: “Life as a

whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell

us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random

mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not

happen to any overall purpose.†Thus,

since life really has no overall purpose, the government should be in

the business of using Medicare to pressure the poor, the disabled and

the elderly that — nudge, nudge — isn’t it time to bid the planet hasta

la vista? WHICH

BRINGS US TO DR. DONALD BERWICK himself, the Obama administration’s

Medicare recess-appointed head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid

Services. Dr. Berwick personally issued the Christmas Death Panel Rule,

confirming in spades why he received a recess appointment from Obama.

It was clear to Senate Democrats that Berwick’s chances of surviving a

Senate confirmation battle were iffy at best. Why?

Precisely because Berwick was well on record as expressing his deep

admiration — make that lust — for the British government run system,

saying: “I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. … The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavors of modern

times.†So Obama

waited until he could skip a Senate debate and vote entirely and just

recess-appoint Berwick — who in turn is doing exactly what his record

suggested he would do. Sure

enough, the philosophy used by the British is precisely what Berwick

used to describe the new Berwick Rule. Reported the Times of Berwick: “Using

unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,†Dr.

Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques,

including advance directives and involvement of patients and families

in decision-making, have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the

end of life, leading to both lower cost and more humane care.†So. What

do we have here? The death

panels were written into the original version of ObamaCare. Governor

Palin, speaking out in her famous Facebook post, pulled back the shroud

surrounding this horrifying idea. Less noticed at the time — but

undoubtedly a headline grabber now — Minority Leader Boehner agreed,

citing alarm over government sponsored euthanasia. Said Boehner: Section

1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers

to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on “the use of

artificially administered nutrition and hydration†and other end of

life treatments, and may place seniors in situations where they feel

pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign.

This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward

government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law. Obama

protested he had no intention of “pulling the plug on Grandma†— but

the idea, embodied in Section 1233 of the House version of the bill,

was pulled from the final bill in part because of Palin’s — and

Boehner’s — focused attention. Obama

installs Dr. Berwick to head the Medicare program as a recess

appointment because Berwick’s controversial enthusiastic embrace of the

British health care system and its death panel procedures would have

prevented his confirmation. On

Christmas day 2010, the Times reports the death panel idea will become

a Medicare rule on January 1, 2011 — that would be four days from

today. How? By fiat. As a government Medicare “rule†or “regulation†as

put forth by the government agency now run by Dr. Berwick. The rule

is justified because Berwick believes the government must “reduce

inappropriate care at the end of life†A Berwick spokesman says the

government should be saying to elderly patients, vulnerable patients,

disabled patients — patients like Palin’s famous Down’s syndrome

son: “When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and

delay your death?†Nudge.

D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life educational

organization, says of the new rule: “The infamous Section 1233 is still

alive and kicking. Patients will lose the ability to control treatments

at the end of life.†Oh yes.

Did we mention no one was supposed to know about all of this? Congressman

Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who wrote the original provision

in the House version of ObamaCare that was unmasked by Palin, has

put the word out to his allies. Says the Congressman’s office in an

e-mail to his allies: While we

are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the

rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could

be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use

this small provision to perpetuate the “death panel†myth. We would

ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your

lists, even if they are “supporters†— e-mails can too easily be

forwarded…Thus far, it

seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping

a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted

response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of

keeping it. No wonder

Blumenauer wants to keep this quiet. Did you

catch that word “us†in the sentence from Dr. Berwick’s spokesperson? Here’s

the sentence again: When the

time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay your

death? The word

“us†refers not to a doctor and his patient. It refers to the

government. When

Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel was cited by longtime

health care expert Betsy McCaughey as discussing the idea that patients

with dementia should be denied treatment, Emanuel’s defenders (he is

also the brother of ex-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel)

floated a Time magazine story saying Emanuel “only mentioned dementia

in a discussion of theoretical approaches, not an endorsement of a

particular policy.†Oblivious

to the fact that that no less than the President himself expressed a

version of the same sentiment (as has Berwick) when he went on national

television to answer a woman’s observation that at over a hundred her

mother was very vital with a lot of spirit, and shouldn’t that be taken

into account in any government health care decision? Said Obama: “I

don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That

would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to

have rules….†Government

rules. Like the rule just issued by Dr. Berwick. A rule

that effectively is now going to bully individuals — doubtless many of

them poor, disabled or elderly. Ironically creating a system where you

will only escape Obama’s government sponsored Big Chill if you are,

say, a rich liberal. In effect

the administration is trying to bully Congress by making an end-run

with a regulation because Congress said no to Section 1233. The

Heritage Foundation has accurately noted yesterday that, quite aside

from the substance here — the new Berwick death panel rule or the FCC’s

new net neutrality rules and so on — the real issue is the Obama

administration’s clear intent to govern by executive fiat now that it

has lost control of the House and, effectively, the Senate as well.

Government-by-Obama fiat will be the subject of a furious struggle in

the new Congress. Says

Heritage by way of focusing on a return to government by elected

officials rather than a central government of rule-making un-elected

bureaucrats: “There is

also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to review and

overrule regulations issued by government agencies.†Which is

to say, the Berwick rule can be undone — if the Congress orders it

undone. This

episode is a reminder that Governor Palin took a lot of heat for

bringing attention to this issue. No one expects her critics — now

proven wrong by Berwick — to give her any credit for being right. Or

for that matter to the new Speaker Boehner. But the

fact remains that Palin has shown leadership here — one might call it

presidential-style leadership — in persisting with an issue that is now

coming back to bite the American people in the form of a new Medicare

rule on death panels — reported of all days on Christmas day. No wonder

Boehner will be Speaker of the House. From: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/28/berwick-sets-up-death-panels-b By Lord on 12.28.

[Guest guest]

Obama

Sneaks “Death Panels†Back Into Obamacare; Does End-Run Around Congress January

3, 2011

“If they would rather die they had better do it, and

decrease the surplus population.†— Ebenezer Scrooge in

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Palin was right.

Boehner — make that Speaker-elect of the House Boehner — was right. While

Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and presumably

not paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story

ironically dated Christmas Day — a holiday celebrating the birth of the

Prince of Peace — reported the following: Obama

Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir WASHINGTON

— 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. In other words, the 2009 charge

leveled by former Alaska Governor Palin and the then-House

Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to set up what Palin

termed government “death panels†— panels that Boehner said would set

the government on the road to euthanasia — is no longer a charge. It’s reality. By executive fiat —

in this case a new Medicare rule issued by Obama Medicare chief Dr.

Berwick. Palin,

who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009 during the

health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning

political attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this

about the prospect of death panels: And who

will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and

the disabled, of course. 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,â€

whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. Her

famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly dropped by

Congress. Now, with

Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring Washington

momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its

death panel goal anyway, as the Times now admits. Says the paper of the

new Christmas death panel regulation that replaces medical science and

voluntary private judgment with the inevitable pressure of politicized

health care: Congressional

supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They

fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans

seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the

Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the

critically ill. Which is

another way of saying something else: Governor Palin has been

vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated. And

Palin’s critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all

over their faces. Obama’s Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most

hotly controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a

conservative ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress.

With no less than Boehner himself taking the gavel from Pelosi as

the new Speaker of the House. What does

this new rule say and do, exactly? It

inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as

Palin said was Obama’s intention. Not, as was true of its original

legislative formulation, every five years. But annually. No one of

any sense objects to an individual and doctor having end-of-life

discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the

Obama administration and its obsession for control wants the government

to incentivize the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a

system that on its face pressures the most deeply vulnerable of

Americans in the most Orwellian of terms to end their lives. Control

and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step

philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal.

And the Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on

Christmas Day when it no one is looking, is a perfect example — if

hardly the only example — of how the Obama Administration views its

role. Control and pressure. Pressure and control. Versus

the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and freedom. Says the

Times of the Obama Administration’s justification for its secretive

move to mandate death panels by regulatory fiat: In this

case, the administration said research had shown the value of

end-of-life planning. Research?

What research could possibly justify a government-sponsored annual

attempt to pressure a poor, disabled, or elderly American into

believing that they would be better off dead because they’re costing

society too much money? British

research. Says the Times: “Advance

care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family

satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving

relatives,†the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare

regulation, quoting research published this year in the British Medical

Journal.†You read

that right. British

research is being cited in the preamble of this Medicare death panel

rule as a justification for the new rule — a stunning turn of events

that will surely launch a firestorm over trying to remodel the American

health care system after the hotly criticized British health care

system. A system that makes no pretense of politically rationed health

care. Part of

the furor launched over Palin’s remarks was the discovery by millions

of frightened Americans that Obama health care bureaucrats admired the

British health care system — where the government in fact rations

health care on a political basis and decides who should live or die

based on what is called the “QALY†— Quality-Adjusted Life Year. This

has been discussed previously in this space — in fact just over a week

before Governor Palin wrote her Facebook statement. It has also been

discussed by health care consultant Catron here where he

explained how the QALY system worked. In

Catron’s words: “A year of perfect health, for example, is given a

value of 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and

1. If you are confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be

valued at half that of your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or

deaf, you also score low. All that remains is to assign a specific

dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your life has a price tag.†Princeton’s

controversial Dr. Singer, a liberal and big believer in the

British health care system, happily related the British politicization

of medical decisions in a New York Times Magazine article during all of

this, an instance in which “Britain’s National Institute for Health and

Clinical Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National

Health Service should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer.â€

Why? The government said it was too expensive and therefore simply

denied the drug. This in turn led to a furious reaction even from

stiff-upper-lip Brits with charges their government was “immoral†and

willing to let patients die. Grudgingly,

the drug was eventually approved. But not before one angry British

woman, whose husband’s life was at stake, angrily asked: “What price is

life?†As this

is written the Obama Food and Drug Administration is now taking

Americans down this same path, rejecting the breast cancer drug Avastin

with what many are citing as unbelievable science — but very believable

political concerns that the drug is, in the bureaucrats’ view, too

expensive. Thereby inserting the judgment of political bureaucrats for

medical science — and the freedom of patients to order the drug. Here’s

this from the Heartland Institute: According

to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, the FDA’s

decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on

the expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as

$90,000 per year for a single patient. The FDA

claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin’s cost and was based

solely on the drug’s medical effectiveness,†Pipes said. “This isn’t

believable. Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast

cancer. Avastin is the last hope for many not to meet that fate. While

the drug is costly, it often provides immense benefits to patients. Somewhere

an American woman with breast cancer is surely saying the same thing as

her British counterpart: “What price is life?†Singer

had an answer. Really. Said the famous Bioethics professor: “Life as a

whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell

us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random

mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not

happen to any overall purpose.†Thus,

since life really has no overall purpose, the government should be in

the business of using Medicare to pressure the poor, the disabled and

the elderly that — nudge, nudge — isn’t it time to bid the planet hasta

la vista? WHICH

BRINGS US TO DR. DONALD BERWICK himself, the Obama administration’s

Medicare recess-appointed head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid

Services. Dr. Berwick personally issued the Christmas Death Panel Rule,

confirming in spades why he received a recess appointment from Obama.

It was clear to Senate Democrats that Berwick’s chances of surviving a

Senate confirmation battle were iffy at best. Why?

Precisely because Berwick was well on record as expressing his deep

admiration — make that lust — for the British government run system,

saying: “I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. … The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavors of modern

times.†So Obama

waited until he could skip a Senate debate and vote entirely and just

recess-appoint Berwick — who in turn is doing exactly what his record

suggested he would do. Sure

enough, the philosophy used by the British is precisely what Berwick

used to describe the new Berwick Rule. Reported the Times of Berwick: “Using

unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,†Dr.

Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques,

including advance directives and involvement of patients and families

in decision-making, have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the

end of life, leading to both lower cost and more humane care.†So. What

do we have here? The death

panels were written into the original version of ObamaCare. Governor

Palin, speaking out in her famous Facebook post, pulled back the shroud

surrounding this horrifying idea. Less noticed at the time — but

undoubtedly a headline grabber now — Minority Leader Boehner agreed,

citing alarm over government sponsored euthanasia. Said Boehner: Section

1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers

to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on “the use of

artificially administered nutrition and hydration†and other end of

life treatments, and may place seniors in situations where they feel

pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign.

This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward

government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law. Obama

protested he had no intention of “pulling the plug on Grandma†— but

the idea, embodied in Section 1233 of the House version of the bill,

was pulled from the final bill in part because of Palin’s — and

Boehner’s — focused attention. Obama

installs Dr. Berwick to head the Medicare program as a recess

appointment because Berwick’s controversial enthusiastic embrace of the

British health care system and its death panel procedures would have

prevented his confirmation. On

Christmas day 2010, the Times reports the death panel idea will become

a Medicare rule on January 1, 2011 — that would be four days from

today. How? By fiat. As a government Medicare “rule†or “regulation†as

put forth by the government agency now run by Dr. Berwick. The rule

is justified because Berwick believes the government must “reduce

inappropriate care at the end of life†A Berwick spokesman says the

government should be saying to elderly patients, vulnerable patients,

disabled patients — patients like Palin’s famous Down’s syndrome

son: “When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and

delay your death?†Nudge.

D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life educational

organization, says of the new rule: “The infamous Section 1233 is still

alive and kicking. Patients will lose the ability to control treatments

at the end of life.†Oh yes.

Did we mention no one was supposed to know about all of this? Congressman

Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who wrote the original provision

in the House version of ObamaCare that was unmasked by Palin, has

put the word out to his allies. Says the Congressman’s office in an

e-mail to his allies: While we

are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the

rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could

be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use

this small provision to perpetuate the “death panel†myth. We would

ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your

lists, even if they are “supporters†— e-mails can too easily be

forwarded…Thus far, it

seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping

a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted

response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of

keeping it. No wonder

Blumenauer wants to keep this quiet. Did you

catch that word “us†in the sentence from Dr. Berwick’s spokesperson? Here’s

the sentence again: When the

time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay your

death? The word

“us†refers not to a doctor and his patient. It refers to the

government. When

Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel was cited by longtime

health care expert Betsy McCaughey as discussing the idea that patients

with dementia should be denied treatment, Emanuel’s defenders (he is

also the brother of ex-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel)

floated a Time magazine story saying Emanuel “only mentioned dementia

in a discussion of theoretical approaches, not an endorsement of a

particular policy.†Oblivious

to the fact that that no less than the President himself expressed a

version of the same sentiment (as has Berwick) when he went on national

television to answer a woman’s observation that at over a hundred her

mother was very vital with a lot of spirit, and shouldn’t that be taken

into account in any government health care decision? Said Obama: “I

don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That

would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to

have rules….†Government

rules. Like the rule just issued by Dr. Berwick. A rule

that effectively is now going to bully individuals — doubtless many of

them poor, disabled or elderly. Ironically creating a system where you

will only escape Obama’s government sponsored Big Chill if you are,

say, a rich liberal. In effect

the administration is trying to bully Congress by making an end-run

with a regulation because Congress said no to Section 1233. The

Heritage Foundation has accurately noted yesterday that, quite aside

from the substance here — the new Berwick death panel rule or the FCC’s

new net neutrality rules and so on — the real issue is the Obama

administration’s clear intent to govern by executive fiat now that it

has lost control of the House and, effectively, the Senate as well.

Government-by-Obama fiat will be the subject of a furious struggle in

the new Congress. Says

Heritage by way of focusing on a return to government by elected

officials rather than a central government of rule-making un-elected

bureaucrats: “There is

also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to review and

overrule regulations issued by government agencies.†Which is

to say, the Berwick rule can be undone — if the Congress orders it

undone. This

episode is a reminder that Governor Palin took a lot of heat for

bringing attention to this issue. No one expects her critics — now

proven wrong by Berwick — to give her any credit for being right. Or

for that matter to the new Speaker Boehner. But the

fact remains that Palin has shown leadership here — one might call it

presidential-style leadership — in persisting with an issue that is now

coming back to bite the American people in the form of a new Medicare

rule on death panels — reported of all days on Christmas day. No wonder

Boehner will be Speaker of the House. From: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/28/berwick-sets-up-death-panels-b By Lord on 12.28.

[Guest guest]

This article is kind of funny in a way but it is actually pretty sick. It's

a shame that in a time when we are having so many problems that there are

those who feel the need to create and publish this kind of filth. But then

again it is from the American Spectator. I don't even think FOX would stoop

this low.

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:28 PM, Kirk McLoren <kirkmcloren@...> wrote:

>

>

>

>

> Obama Sneaks “Death Panels” Back Into Obamacare; Does End-Run Around

> Congress

> January 3, 2011

>

> “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus

> population.” — Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

>

> Palin was right.

> Boehner — make that Speaker-elect of the House Boehner — was

> right.

> While Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and

> presumably not

> paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story ironically

> dated

> Christmas Day — a holiday celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace —

> reported the following:

>

> Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

> WASHINGTON — 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.

> In other words, the 2009 charge leveled by former Alaska Governor

> Palin

> and the then-House Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to set

> up

> what Palin termed government “death panels” — panels that Boehner said

> would set

> the government on the road to euthanasia — is no longer a charge.

> It’s reality. By executive fiat — in this case a new Medicare rule issued

> by

> Obama Medicare chief Dr. Berwick.

> Palin, who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009 during

> the

> health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning

> political

> attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this about the

> prospect

> of death panels:

> And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly,

> and

> the disabled, of course. 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.

> Her famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly dropped by

>

> Congress.

> Now, with Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring Washington

> momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its death

> panel

> goal anyway, as the Times now admits. Says the paper of the new Christmas

> death

> panel regulation that replaces medical science and voluntary private

> judgment

> with the inevitable pressure of politicized health care:

> Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept

> quiet.

> They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans

> seized

> on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill

> would

> allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

> Which is another way of saying something else: Governor Palin has been

> vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated.

> And Palin’s critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all

> over

> their faces. Obama’s Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most hotly

> controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a

> conservative

> ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress. With no less than

> Boehner himself taking the gavel from Pelosi as the new Speaker of

> the

> House.

> What does this new rule say and do, exactly?

> It inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as

> Palin

> said was Obama’s intention. Not, as was true of its original legislative

> formulation, every five years. But annually.

>

> No one of any sense objects to an individual and doctor having end-of-life

> discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the Obama

> administration and its obsession for control wants the government to

> incentivize

> the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a system that on its face

>

> pressures the most deeply vulnerable of Americans in the most Orwellian of

> terms

> to end their lives.

> Control and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step

> philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal. And

> the

> Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on Christmas Day

> when

> it no one is looking, is a perfect example — if hardly the only example —

> of how

> the Obama Administration views its role. Control and pressure. Pressure and

>

> control.

> Versus the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and freedom.

> Says the Times of the Obama Administration’s justification for its

> secretive

> move to mandate death panels by regulatory fiat:

> In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of

> end-of-life planning.

> Research? What research could possibly justify a government-sponsored

> annual

> attempt to pressure a poor, disabled, or elderly American into believing

> that

> they would be better off dead because they’re costing society too much

> money?

>

> British research. Says the Times:

> “Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family

> satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving

> relatives,”

> the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation, quoting

>

> research published this year in the British Medical Journal.”

> You read that right.

> British research is being cited in the preamble of this Medicare death

> panel

> rule as a justification for the new rule — a stunning turn of events that

> will

> surely launch a firestorm over trying to remodel the American health care

> system

> after the hotly criticized British health care system. A system that makes

> no

> pretense of politically rationed health care.

> Part of the furor launched over Palin’s remarks was the discovery by

> millions of

> frightened Americans that Obama health care bureaucrats admired the British

>

> health care system — where the government in fact rations health care on a

> political basis and decides who should live or die based on what is called

> the

> “QALY” — Quality-Adjusted Life Year. This has been discussed previously in

> this

> space — in fact just over a week before Governor Palin wrote her Facebook

> statement. It has also been discussed by health care consultant

> Catron

> here where he explained how the QALY system worked.

>

> In Catron’s words: “A year of perfect health, for example, is given a value

> of

> 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you are

>

> confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half that

> of

> your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low. All

> that

> remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your

> life

> has a price tag.”

> Princeton’s controversial Dr. Singer, a liberal and big believer in

> the

> British health care system, happily related the British politicization of

> medical decisions in a New York Times Magazine article during all of this,

> an

> instance in which “Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical

> Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National Health

> Service

> should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer.” Why? The government

> said it

> was too expensive and therefore simply denied the drug. This in turn led to

> a

> furious reaction even from stiff-upper-lip Brits with charges their

> government

> was “immoral” and willing to let patients die.

>

> Grudgingly, the drug was eventually approved. But not before one angry

> British

> woman, whose husband’s life was at stake, angrily asked: “What price is

> life?”

> As this is written the Obama Food and Drug Administration is now taking

> Americans down this same path, rejecting the breast cancer drug Avastin

> with

> what many are citing as unbelievable science — but very believable

> political

> concerns that the drug is, in the bureaucrats’ view, too expensive. Thereby

>

> inserting the judgment of political bureaucrats for medical science — and

> the

> freedom of patients to order the drug. Here’s this from the Heartland

> Institute:

> According to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, the

> FDA’s

> decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on the

> expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as $90,000

> per

> year for a single patient.

> The FDA claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin’s cost and was

> based

> solely on the drug’s medical effectiveness,” Pipes said. “This isn’t

> believable.

> Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast cancer. Avastin is

> the

> last hope for many not to meet that fate. While the drug is costly, it

> often

> provides immense benefits to patients.

> Somewhere an American woman with breast cancer is surely saying the same

> thing

> as her British counterpart: “What price is life?”

> Singer had an answer. Really. Said the famous Bioethics professor: “Life as

> a

> whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us,

> in a

> chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and

> natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall

>

> purpose.”

> Thus, since life really has no overall purpose, the government should be in

> the

> business of using Medicare to pressure the poor, the disabled and the

> elderly

> that — nudge, nudge — isn’t it time to bid the planet hasta la vista?

> WHICH BRINGS US TO DR. DONALD BERWICK himself, the Obama administration’s

> Medicare recess-appointed head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid

> Services.

> Dr. Berwick personally issued the Christmas Death Panel Rule, confirming in

>

> spades why he received a recess appointment from Obama. It was clear to

> Senate

> Democrats that Berwick’s chances of surviving a Senate confirmation battle

> were

> iffy at best.

>

> Why? Precisely because Berwick was well on record as expressing his deep

> admiration — make that lust — for the British government run system,

> saying: “I

> am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. …The NHS is one

> of the

> astounding human endeavors of modern times.”

> So Obama waited until he could skip a Senate debate and vote entirely and

> just

> recess-appoint Berwick — who in turn is doing exactly what his record

> suggested

> he would do.

> Sure enough, the philosophy used by the British is precisely what Berwick

> used

> to describe the new Berwick Rule. Reported the Times of Berwick:

> “Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,” Dr.

> Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques,

> including

> advance directives and involvement of patients and families in

> decision-making,

> have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life, leading to

> both

> lower cost and more humane care.”

> So. What do we have here?

> The death panels were written into the original version of ObamaCare.

> Governor Palin, speaking out in her famous Facebook post, pulled back the

> shroud

> surrounding this horrifying idea. Less noticed at the time — but

> undoubtedly a

> headline grabber now — Minority Leader Boehner agreed, citing alarm over

> government sponsored euthanasia. Said Boehner:

> Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care

> providers

> to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on “the use of

> artificially

> administered nutrition and hydration” and other end of life treatments, and

> may

> place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life

> directives they would not otherwise sign. This provision may start us down

> a

> treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into

> law.

>

> Obama protested he had no intention of “pulling the plug on Grandma” — but

> the

> idea, embodied in Section 1233 of the House version of the bill, was pulled

> from

> the final bill in part because of Palin’s — and Boehner’s — focused

> attention.

> Obama installs Dr. Berwick to head the Medicare program as a recess

> appointment because Berwick’s controversial enthusiastic embrace of the

> British

> health care system and its death panel procedures would have prevented his

> confirmation.

> On Christmas day 2010, the Times reports the death panel idea will become a

>

> Medicare rule on January 1, 2011 — that would be four days from today. How?

> By

> fiat. As a government Medicare “rule” or “regulation” as put forth by the

> government agency now run by Dr. Berwick.

>

> The rule is justified because Berwick believes the government must “reduce

> inappropriate care at the end of life” A Berwick spokesman says the

> government

> should be saying to elderly patients, vulnerable patients, disabled

> patients —

> patients like Palin’s famous Down’s syndrome son: “When the time

> comes, do

> you want us to use technology to try and delay your death?” Nudge.

> D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life

> educational

> organization, says of the new rule: “The infamous Section 1233 is still

> alive

> and kicking. Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the

> end of

> life.”

> Oh yes. Did we mention no one was supposed to know about all of this?

> Congressman Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who wrote the original

> provision in the House version of ObamaCare that was unmasked by

> Palin,

> has put the word out to his allies. Says the Congressman’s office in an

> e-mail

> to his allies:

> While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the

> rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could be

> modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this

> small

> provision to perpetuate the “death panel” myth.

> We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your

> lists, even if they are “supporters” — e-mails can too easily be

> forwarded…Thus

> far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be

> keeping

> a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted

> response.

> The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.

>

> No wonder Blumenauer wants to keep this quiet.

> Did you catch that word “us” in the sentence from Dr. Berwick’s

> spokesperson?

> Here’s the sentence again:

> When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay your

>

> death?

> The word “us” refers not to a doctor and his patient. It refers to the

> government.

> When Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel was cited by longtime

> health

> care expert Betsy McCaughey as discussing the idea that patients with

> dementia

> should be denied treatment, Emanuel’s defenders (he is also the brother of

> ex-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) floated a Time magazine

> story

> saying Emanuel “only mentioned dementia in a discussion of theoretical

> approaches, not an endorsement of a particular policy.”

>

> Oblivious to the fact that that no less than the President himself

> expressed a

> version of the same sentiment (as has Berwick) when he went on national

> television to answer a woman’s observation that at over a hundred her

> mother was

> very vital with a lot of spirit, and shouldn’t that be taken into account

> in any

> government health care decision? Said Obama: “I don’t think that we can

> make

> judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That would be a pretty subjective

> decision

> to be making. I think we have to have rules….”

> Government rules. Like the rule just issued by Dr. Berwick.

> A rule that effectively is now going to bully individuals — doubtless many

> of

> them poor, disabled or elderly. Ironically creating a system where you will

> only

> escape Obama’s government sponsored Big Chill if you are, say, a rich

> liberal.

> In effect the administration is trying to bully Congress by making an

> end-run

> with a regulation because Congress said no to Section 1233.

> The Heritage Foundation has accurately noted yesterday that, quite aside

> from

> the substance here — the new Berwick death panel rule or the FCC’s new net

> neutrality rules and so on — the real issue is the Obama administration’s

> clear

> intent to govern by executive fiat now that it has lost control of the

> House

> and, effectively, the Senate as well. Government-by-Obama fiat will be the

> subject of a furious struggle in the new Congress.

> Says Heritage by way of focusing on a return to government by elected

> officials

> rather than a central government of rule-making un-elected bureaucrats:

> “There is also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to

> review and

> overrule regulations issued by government agencies.”

>

> Which is to say, the Berwick rule can be undone — if the Congress orders it

>

> undone.

> This episode is a reminder that Governor Palin took a lot of heat for

> bringing

> attention to this issue. No one expects her critics — now proven wrong by

> Berwick — to give her any credit for being right. Or for that matter to the

> new

> Speaker Boehner.

> But the fact remains that Palin has shown leadership here — one might call

> it

> presidential-style leadership — in persisting with an issue that is now

> coming

> back to bite the American people in the form of a new Medicare rule on

> death

> panels — reported of all days on Christmas day.

> No wonder Boehner will be Speaker of the House.

> From:

> http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/28/berwick-sets-up-death-panels-b

> By Lord on 12.28.

>

>

[Guest guest]

They have been calling for " triage " for some time now - or havent you noticed.

Kirk

" And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence,

through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual

abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the

wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the

trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and

indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves

into your government and be your rulers. " - Excerpt from " Dangers of a Salaried

Bureaucracy " addressed to the Constitutional Convention members by

lin in 1787

________________________________

From: Chuck <chuckfrasher@...>

Longevity

Sent: Sun, January 2, 2011 10:53:23 PM

Subject: Re: Obama learns from Nazi Germany: Sneaks " Death Panels "

Back Into Obamacare

Kook show.

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:28 PM, Kirk McLoren <kirkmcloren@...> wrote:

>

>

>

>

> Obama Sneaks “Death Panels†Back Into Obamacare; Does End-Run Around

> Congress

> January 3, 2011

>

> “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus

> population.†— Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

>

> Palin was right.

> Boehner — make that Speaker-elect of the House Boehner — was

> right.

> While Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and

> presumably not

> paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story ironically

> dated

> Christmas Day — a holiday celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace —

> reported the following:

>

> Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

> WASHINGTON — 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.

> In other words, the 2009 charge leveled by former Alaska Governor

> Palin

> and the then-House Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to set

> up

> what Palin termed government “death panels†— panels that Boehner said

> would set

> the government on the road to euthanasia — is no longer a charge.

> It’s reality. By executive fiat — in this case a new Medicare rule issued

> by

> Obama Medicare chief Dr. Berwick.

> Palin, who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009 during

> the

> health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning

> political

> attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this about the

> prospect

> of death panels:

> And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly,

> and

> the disabled, of course. 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.

> Her famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly dropped by

>

> Congress.

> Now, with Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring Washington

> momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its death

> panel

> goal anyway, as the Times now admits. Says the paper of the new Christmas

> death

> panel regulation that replaces medical science and voluntary private

> judgment

> with the inevitable pressure of politicized health care:

> Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept

> quiet.

> They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans

> seized

> on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill

> would

> allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

> Which is another way of saying something else: Governor Palin has been

> vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated.

> And Palin’s critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all

> over

> their faces. Obama’s Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most hotly

> controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a

> conservative

> ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress. With no less than

> Boehner himself taking the gavel from Pelosi as the new Speaker of

> the

> House.

> What does this new rule say and do, exactly?

> It inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as

> Palin

> said was Obama’s intention. Not, as was true of its original legislative

> formulation, every five years. But annually.

>

> No one of any sense objects to an individual and doctor having end-of-life

> discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the Obama

> administration and its obsession for control wants the government to

> incentivize

> the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a system that on its face

>

> pressures the most deeply vulnerable of Americans in the most Orwellian of

> terms

> to end their lives.

> Control and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step

> philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal. And

> the

> Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on Christmas Day

> when

> it no one is looking, is a perfect example — if hardly the only example —

> of how

> the Obama Administration views its role. Control and pressure. Pressure and

>

> control.

> Versus the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and freedom.

> Says the Times of the Obama Administration’s justification for its

> secretive

> move to mandate death panels by regulatory fiat:

> In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of

> end-of-life planning.

> Research? What research could possibly justify a government-sponsored

> annual

> attempt to pressure a poor, disabled, or elderly American into believing

> that

> they would be better off dead because they’re costing society too much

> money?

>

> British research. Says the Times:

> “Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family

> satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving

> relatives,â€

> the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation, quoting

>

> research published this year in the British Medical Journal.â€

> You read that right.

> British research is being cited in the preamble of this Medicare death

> panel

> rule as a justification for the new rule — a stunning turn of events that

> will

> surely launch a firestorm over trying to remodel the American health care

> system

> after the hotly criticized British health care system. A system that makes

> no

> pretense of politically rationed health care.

> Part of the furor launched over Palin’s remarks was the discovery by

> millions of

> frightened Americans that Obama health care bureaucrats admired the British

>

> health care system — where the government in fact rations health care on a

> political basis and decides who should live or die based on what is called

> the

> “QALY†— Quality-Adjusted Life Year. This has been discussed previously

in

> this

> space — in fact just over a week before Governor Palin wrote her Facebook

> statement. It has also been discussed by health care consultant

> Catron

> here where he explained how the QALY system worked.

>

> In Catron’s words: “A year of perfect health, for example, is given a

value

> of

> 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you are

>

> confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half that

> of

> your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low. All

> that

> remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your

> life

> has a price tag.â€

> Princeton’s controversial Dr. Singer, a liberal and big believer in

> the

> British health care system, happily related the British politicization of

> medical decisions in a New York Times Magazine article during all of this,

> an

> instance in which “Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical

> Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National Health

> Service

> should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer.†Why? The government

> said it

> was too expensive and therefore simply denied the drug. This in turn led to

> a

> furious reaction even from stiff-upper-lip Brits with charges their

> government

> was “immoral†and willing to let patients die.

>

> Grudgingly, the drug was eventually approved. But not before one angry

> British

> woman, whose husband’s life was at stake, angrily asked: “What price is

> life?â€

> As this is written the Obama Food and Drug Administration is now taking

> Americans down this same path, rejecting the breast cancer drug Avastin

> with

> what many are citing as unbelievable science — but very believable

> political

> concerns that the drug is, in the bureaucrats’ view, too expensive. Thereby

>

> inserting the judgment of political bureaucrats for medical science — and

> the

> freedom of patients to order the drug. Here’s this from the Heartland

> Institute:

> According to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, the

> FDA’s

> decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on the

> expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as $90,000

> per

> year for a single patient.

> The FDA claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin’s cost and was

> based

> solely on the drug’s medical effectiveness,†Pipes said. “This isn’t

> believable.

> Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast cancer. Avastin is

> the

> last hope for many not to meet that fate. While the drug is costly, it

> often

> provides immense benefits to patients.

> Somewhere an American woman with breast cancer is surely saying the same

> thing

> as her British counterpart: “What price is life?â€

> Singer had an answer. Really. Said the famous Bioethics professor: “Life as

> a

> whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us,

> in a

> chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and

> natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall

>

> purpose.â€

> Thus, since life really has no overall purpose, the government should be in

> the

> business of using Medicare to pressure the poor, the disabled and the

> elderly

> that — nudge, nudge — isn’t it time to bid the planet hasta la vista?

> WHICH BRINGS US TO DR. DONALD BERWICK himself, the Obama administration’s

> Medicare recess-appointed head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid

> Services.

> Dr. Berwick personally issued the Christmas Death Panel Rule, confirming in

>

> spades why he received a recess appointment from Obama. It was clear to

> Senate

> Democrats that Berwick’s chances of surviving a Senate confirmation battle

> were

> iffy at best.

>

> Why? Precisely because Berwick was well on record as expressing his deep

> admiration — make that lust — for the British government run system,

> saying: “I

> am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. …The NHS is one

> of the

> astounding human endeavors of modern times.â€

> So Obama waited until he could skip a Senate debate and vote entirely and

> just

> recess-appoint Berwick — who in turn is doing exactly what his record

> suggested

> he would do.

> Sure enough, the philosophy used by the British is precisely what Berwick

> used

> to describe the new Berwick Rule. Reported the Times of Berwick:

> “Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,†Dr.

> Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques,

> including

> advance directives and involvement of patients and families in

> decision-making,

> have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life, leading to

> both

> lower cost and more humane care.â€

> So. What do we have here?

> The death panels were written into the original version of ObamaCare.

> Governor Palin, speaking out in her famous Facebook post, pulled back the

> shroud

> surrounding this horrifying idea. Less noticed at the time — but

> undoubtedly a

> headline grabber now — Minority Leader Boehner agreed, citing alarm over

> government sponsored euthanasia. Said Boehner:

> Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care

> providers

> to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on “the use of

> artificially

> administered nutrition and hydration†and other end of life treatments, and

> may

> place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life

> directives they would not otherwise sign. This provision may start us down

> a

> treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into

> law.

>

> Obama protested he had no intention of “pulling the plug on Grandma†—

but

> the

> idea, embodied in Section 1233 of the House version of the bill, was pulled

> from

> the final bill in part because of Palin’s — and Boehner’s — focused

> attention.

> Obama installs Dr. Berwick to head the Medicare program as a recess

> appointment because Berwick’s controversial enthusiastic embrace of the

> British

> health care system and its death panel procedures would have prevented his

> confirmation.

> On Christmas day 2010, the Times reports the death panel idea will become a

>

> Medicare rule on January 1, 2011 — that would be four days from today. How?

> By

> fiat. As a government Medicare “rule†or “regulation†as put forth by

the

> government agency now run by Dr. Berwick.

>

> The rule is justified because Berwick believes the government must “reduce

> inappropriate care at the end of life†A Berwick spokesman says the

> government

> should be saying to elderly patients, vulnerable patients, disabled

> patients —

> patients like Palin’s famous Down’s syndrome son: “When the time

> comes, do

> you want us to use technology to try and delay your death?†Nudge.

> D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life

> educational

> organization, says of the new rule: “The infamous Section 1233 is still

> alive

> and kicking. Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the

> end of

> life.â€

> Oh yes. Did we mention no one was supposed to know about all of this?

> Congressman Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who wrote the original

> provision in the House version of ObamaCare that was unmasked by

> Palin,

> has put the word out to his allies. Says the Congressman’s office in an

> e-mail

> to his allies:

> While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the

> rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could be

> modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this

> small

> provision to perpetuate the “death panel†myth.

> We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your

> lists, even if they are “supporters†— e-mails can too easily be

> forwarded…Thus

> far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be

> keeping

> a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted

> response.

> The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.

>

> No wonder Blumenauer wants to keep this quiet.

> Did you catch that word “us†in the sentence from Dr. Berwick’s

> spokesperson?

> Here’s the sentence again:

> When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay your

>

> death?

> The word “us†refers not to a doctor and his patient. It refers to the

> government.

> When Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel was cited by longtime

> health

> care expert Betsy McCaughey as discussing the idea that patients with

> dementia

> should be denied treatment, Emanuel’s defenders (he is also the brother of

> ex-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) floated a Time magazine

> story

> saying Emanuel “only mentioned dementia in a discussion of theoretical

> approaches, not an endorsement of a particular policy.â€

>

> Oblivious to the fact that that no less than the President himself

> expressed a

> version of the same sentiment (as has Berwick) when he went on national

> television to answer a woman’s observation that at over a hundred her

> mother was

> very vital with a lot of spirit, and shouldn’t that be taken into account

> in any

> government health care decision? Said Obama: “I don’t think that we can

> make

> judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That would be a pretty subjective

> decision

> to be making. I think we have to have rules….â€

> Government rules. Like the rule just issued by Dr. Berwick.

> A rule that effectively is now going to bully individuals — doubtless many

> of

> them poor, disabled or elderly. Ironically creating a system where you will

> only

> escape Obama’s government sponsored Big Chill if you are, say, a rich

> liberal.

> In effect the administration is trying to bully Congress by making an

> end-run

> with a regulation because Congress said no to Section 1233.

> The Heritage Foundation has accurately noted yesterday that, quite aside

> from

> the substance here — the new Berwick death panel rule or the FCC’s new net

> neutrality rules and so on — the real issue is the Obama administration’s

> clear

> intent to govern by executive fiat now that it has lost control of the

> House

> and, effectively, the Senate as well. Government-by-Obama fiat will be the

> subject of a furious struggle in the new Congress.

> Says Heritage by way of focusing on a return to government by elected

> officials

> rather than a central government of rule-making un-elected bureaucrats:

> “There is also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to

> review and

> overrule regulations issued by government agencies.â€

>

> Which is to say, the Berwick rule can be undone — if the Congress orders it

>

> undone.

> This episode is a reminder that Governor Palin took a lot of heat for

> bringing

> attention to this issue. No one expects her critics — now proven wrong by

> Berwick — to give her any credit for being right. Or for that matter to the

> new

> Speaker Boehner.

> But the fact remains that Palin has shown leadership here — one might call

> it

> presidential-style leadership — in persisting with an issue that is now

> coming

> back to bite the American people in the form of a new Medicare rule on

> death

> panels — reported of all days on Christmas day.

> No wonder Boehner will be Speaker of the House.

> From:

> http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/28/berwick-sets-up-death-panels-b

> By Lord on 12.28.

>

------------------------------------

[Guest guest]

If Obama is so much 'better than the previous administration', why did he come

up with this policy? He IS responsible for those he puts in administrative

positions, and especially so when he bypasses the confirmation process. This

whole garbage 'health care' bill, not withstanding?

>

> >

> >

> >

> >

> > Obama Sneaks “Death Panels†Back Into Obamacare; Does End-Run Around

> > Congress

> > January 3, 2011

> >

> > “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus

> > population.†— Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

> >

> > Palin was right.

> > Boehner — make that Speaker-elect of the House Boehner — was

> > right.

> > While Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and

> > presumably not

> > paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story ironically

> > dated

> > Christmas Day — a holiday celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace —

> > reported the following:

> >

> > Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

> > WASHINGTON — 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.

> > In other words, the 2009 charge leveled by former Alaska Governor

> > Palin

> > and the then-House Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to

> set

> > up

> > what Palin termed government “death panels†— panels that Boehner said

> > would set

> > the government on the road to euthanasia — is no longer a charge.

> > It’s reality. By executive fiat — in this case a new Medicare rule

issued

> > by

> > Obama Medicare chief Dr. Berwick.

> > Palin, who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009 during

> > the

> > health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning

> > political

> > attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this about the

> > prospect

> > of death panels:

> > And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the

> elderly,

> > and

> > the disabled, of course. 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.

> > Her famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly dropped

> by

> >

> > Congress.

> > Now, with Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring Washington

> > momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its

> death

> > panel

> > goal anyway, as the Times now admits. Says the paper of the new Christmas

> > death

> > panel regulation that replaces medical science and voluntary private

> > judgment

> > with the inevitable pressure of politicized health care:

> > Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept

> > quiet.

> > They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans

> > seized

> > on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill

> > would

> > allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

> > Which is another way of saying something else: Governor Palin has been

> > vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated.

> > And Palin’s critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all

> > over

> > their faces. Obama’s Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most hotly

> > controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a

> > conservative

> > ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress. With no less than

> > Boehner himself taking the gavel from Pelosi as the new Speaker of

> > the

> > House.

> > What does this new rule say and do, exactly?

> > It inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as

> > Palin

> > said was Obama’s intention. Not, as was true of its original legislative

> > formulation, every five years. But annually.

> >

> > No one of any sense objects to an individual and doctor having

> end-of-life

> > discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the

> Obama

> > administration and its obsession for control wants the government to

> > incentivize

> > the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a system that on its

> face

> >

> > pressures the most deeply vulnerable of Americans in the most Orwellian

> of

> > terms

> > to end their lives.

> > Control and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step

> > philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal.

> And

> > the

> > Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on Christmas

> Day

> > when

> > it no one is looking, is a perfect example — if hardly the only example

—

> > of how

> > the Obama Administration views its role. Control and pressure. Pressure

> and

> >

> > control.

> > Versus the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and

> freedom.

> > Says the Times of the Obama Administration’s justification for its

> > secretive

> > move to mandate death panels by regulatory fiat:

> > In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of

> > end-of-life planning.

> > Research? What research could possibly justify a government-sponsored

> > annual

> > attempt to pressure a poor, disabled, or elderly American into believing

> > that

> > they would be better off dead because they’re costing society too much

> > money?

> >

> > British research. Says the Times:

> > “Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family

> > satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving

> > relatives,â€

> > the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation,

> quoting

> >

> > research published this year in the British Medical Journal.â€

> > You read that right.

> > British research is being cited in the preamble of this Medicare death

> > panel

> > rule as a justification for the new rule — a stunning turn of events that

> > will

> > surely launch a firestorm over trying to remodel the American health care

> > system

> > after the hotly criticized British health care system. A system that

> makes

> > no

> > pretense of politically rationed health care.

> > Part of the furor launched over Palin’s remarks was the discovery by

> > millions of

> > frightened Americans that Obama health care bureaucrats admired the

> British

> >

> > health care system — where the government in fact rations health care on

> a

> > political basis and decides who should live or die based on what is

> called

> > the

> > “QALY†— Quality-Adjusted Life Year. This has been discussed

previously

> in

> > this

> > space — in fact just over a week before Governor Palin wrote her Facebook

> > statement. It has also been discussed by health care consultant

> > Catron

> > here where he explained how the QALY system worked.

> >

> > In Catron’s words: “A year of perfect health, for example, is given a

> value

> > of

> > 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you

> are

> >

> > confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half

> that

> > of

> > your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low.

> All

> > that

> > remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your

> > life

> > has a price tag.â€

> > Princeton’s controversial Dr. Singer, a liberal and big believer in

> > the

> > British health care system, happily related the British politicization of

> > medical decisions in a New York Times Magazine article during all of

> this,

> > an

> > instance in which “Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical

> > Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National Health

> > Service

> > should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer.†Why? The government

> > said it

> > was too expensive and therefore simply denied the drug. This in turn led

> to

> > a

> > furious reaction even from stiff-upper-lip Brits with charges their

> > government

> > was “immoral†and willing to let patients die.

> >

> > Grudgingly, the drug was eventually approved. But not before one angry

> > British

> > woman, whose husband’s life was at stake, angrily asked: “What price is

> > life?â€

> > As this is written the Obama Food and Drug Administration is now taking

> > Americans down this same path, rejecting the breast cancer drug Avastin

> > with

> > what many are citing as unbelievable science — but very believable

> > political

> > concerns that the drug is, in the bureaucrats’ view, too expensive.

> Thereby

> >

> > inserting the judgment of political bureaucrats for medical science — and

> > the

> > freedom of patients to order the drug. Here’s this from the Heartland

> > Institute:

> > According to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute,

> the

> > FDA’s

> > decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on the

> > expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as

> $90,000

> > per

> > year for a single patient.

> > The FDA claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin’s cost and was

> > based

> > solely on the drug’s medical effectiveness,†Pipes said. “This isn’t

> > believable.

> > Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast cancer. Avastin is

> > the

> > last hope for many not to meet that fate. While the drug is costly, it

> > often

> > provides immense benefits to patients.

> > Somewhere an American woman with breast cancer is surely saying the same

> > thing

> > as her British counterpart: “What price is life?â€

> > Singer had an answer. Really. Said the famous Bioethics professor: “Life

> as

> > a

> > whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us,

> > in a

> > chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and

> > natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any

> overall

> >

> > purpose.â€

> > Thus, since life really has no overall purpose, the government should be

> in

> > the

> > business of using Medicare to pressure the poor, the disabled and the

> > elderly

> > that — nudge, nudge — isn’t it time to bid the planet hasta la vista?

> > WHICH BRINGS US TO DR. DONALD BERWICK himself, the Obama administration’s

> > Medicare recess-appointed head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid

> > Services.

> > Dr. Berwick personally issued the Christmas Death Panel Rule, confirming

> in

> >

> > spades why he received a recess appointment from Obama. It was clear to

> > Senate

> > Democrats that Berwick’s chances of surviving a Senate confirmation

> battle

> > were

> > iffy at best.

> >

> > Why? Precisely because Berwick was well on record as expressing his deep

> > admiration — make that lust — for the British government run system,

> > saying: “I

> > am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. …The NHS is one

> > of the

> > astounding human endeavors of modern times.â€

> > So Obama waited until he could skip a Senate debate and vote entirely and

> > just

> > recess-appoint Berwick — who in turn is doing exactly what his record

> > suggested

> > he would do.

> > Sure enough, the philosophy used by the British is precisely what Berwick

> > used

> > to describe the new Berwick Rule. Reported the Times of Berwick:

> > “Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,â€

Dr.

> > Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques,

> > including

> > advance directives and involvement of patients and families in

> > decision-making,

> > have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life, leading

> to

> > both

> > lower cost and more humane care.â€

> > So. What do we have here?

> > The death panels were written into the original version of ObamaCare.

> > Governor Palin, speaking out in her famous Facebook post, pulled back the

> > shroud

> > surrounding this horrifying idea. Less noticed at the time — but

> > undoubtedly a

> > headline grabber now — Minority Leader Boehner agreed, citing alarm over

> > government sponsored euthanasia. Said Boehner:

> > Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care

> > providers

> > to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on “the use of

> > artificially

> > administered nutrition and hydration†and other end of life treatments,

> and

> > may

> > place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life

> > directives they would not otherwise sign. This provision may start us

> down

> > a

> > treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into

> > law.

> >

> > Obama protested he had no intention of “pulling the plug on Grandma†—

> but

> > the

> > idea, embodied in Section 1233 of the House version of the bill, was

> pulled

> > from

> > the final bill in part because of Palin’s — and Boehner’s — focused

> > attention.

> > Obama installs Dr. Berwick to head the Medicare program as a

> recess

> > appointment because Berwick’s controversial enthusiastic embrace of the

> > British

> > health care system and its death panel procedures would have prevented

> his

> > confirmation.

> > On Christmas day 2010, the Times reports the death panel idea will become

> a

> >

> > Medicare rule on January 1, 2011 — that would be four days from today.

> How?

> > By

> > fiat. As a government Medicare “rule†or “regulation†as put forth

by the

> > government agency now run by Dr. Berwick.

> >

> > The rule is justified because Berwick believes the government must

> “reduce

> > inappropriate care at the end of life†A Berwick spokesman says the

> > government

> > should be saying to elderly patients, vulnerable patients, disabled

> > patients —

> > patients like Palin’s famous Down’s syndrome son: “When the time

> > comes, do

> > you want us to use technology to try and delay your death?†Nudge.

> > D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life

> > educational

> > organization, says of the new rule: “The infamous Section 1233 is still

> > alive

> > and kicking. Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the

> > end of

> > life.â€

> > Oh yes. Did we mention no one was supposed to know about all of this?

> > Congressman Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who wrote the original

> > provision in the House version of ObamaCare that was unmasked by

> > Palin,

> > has put the word out to his allies. Says the Congressman’s office in an

> > e-mail

> > to his allies:

> > While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the

> > rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could be

> > modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this

> > small

> > provision to perpetuate the “death panel†myth.

> > We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of

> your

> > lists, even if they are “supporters†— e-mails can too easily be

> > forwarded…Thus

> > far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be

> > keeping

> > a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted

> > response.

> > The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.

> >

> > No wonder Blumenauer wants to keep this quiet.

> > Did you catch that word “us†in the sentence from Dr. Berwick’s

> > spokesperson?

> > Here’s the sentence again:

> > When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay

> your

> >

> > death?

> > The word “us†refers not to a doctor and his patient. It refers to the

> > government.

> > When Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel was cited by longtime

> > health

> > care expert Betsy McCaughey as discussing the idea that patients with

> > dementia

> > should be denied treatment, Emanuel’s defenders (he is also the brother

> of

> > ex-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) floated a Time magazine

> > story

> > saying Emanuel “only mentioned dementia in a discussion of theoretical

> > approaches, not an endorsement of a particular policy.â€

> >

> > Oblivious to the fact that that no less than the President himself

> > expressed a

> > version of the same sentiment (as has Berwick) when he went on national

> > television to answer a woman’s observation that at over a hundred her

> > mother was

> > very vital with a lot of spirit, and shouldn’t that be taken into account

> > in any

> > government health care decision? Said Obama: “I don’t think that we can

> > make

> > judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That would be a pretty subjective

> > decision

> > to be making. I think we have to have rules….â€

> > Government rules. Like the rule just issued by Dr. Berwick.

> > A rule that effectively is now going to bully individuals — doubtless

> many

> > of

> > them poor, disabled or elderly. Ironically creating a system where you

> will

> > only

> > escape Obama’s government sponsored Big Chill if you are, say, a rich

> > liberal.

> > In effect the administration is trying to bully Congress by making an

> > end-run

> > with a regulation because Congress said no to Section 1233.

> > The Heritage Foundation has accurately noted yesterday that, quite aside

> > from

> > the substance here — the new Berwick death panel rule or the FCC’s new

> net

> > neutrality rules and so on — the real issue is the Obama

administration’s

> > clear

> > intent to govern by executive fiat now that it has lost control of the

> > House

> > and, effectively, the Senate as well. Government-by-Obama fiat will be

> the

> > subject of a furious struggle in the new Congress.

> > Says Heritage by way of focusing on a return to government by elected

> > officials

> > rather than a central government of rule-making un-elected bureaucrats:

> > “There is also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to

> > review and

> > overrule regulations issued by government agencies.â€

> >

> > Which is to say, the Berwick rule can be undone — if the Congress orders

> it

> >

> > undone.

> > This episode is a reminder that Governor Palin took a lot of heat for

> > bringing

> > attention to this issue. No one expects her critics — now proven wrong by

> > Berwick — to give her any credit for being right. Or for that matter to

> the

> > new

> > Speaker Boehner.

> > But the fact remains that Palin has shown leadership here — one might

> call

> > it

> > presidential-style leadership — in persisting with an issue that is now

> > coming

> > back to bite the American people in the form of a new Medicare rule on

> > death

> > panels — reported of all days on Christmas day.

> > No wonder Boehner will be Speaker of the House.

> > From:

> > http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/28/berwick-sets-up-death-panels-b

> > By Lord on 12.28.

> >

>

> ------------------------------------

>

>

[Guest guest]

*What policy? There are no death panels. *

PolitiFact's 2009 Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/dec/18/politifact-lie-year-\

death-panels/

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 12:39 PM, wayne walusiak <quoipso@...> wrote:

>

>

> If Obama is so much 'better than the previous administration', why did he

> come up with this policy? He IS responsible for those he puts in

> administrative positions, and especially so when he bypasses the

> confirmation process. This whole garbage 'health care' bill, not

> withstanding?

>

>

>

> >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > > Obama Sneaks “Death Panels” Back Into Obamacare; Does End-Run Around

> > > Congress

> > > January 3, 2011

> > >

> > > “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the

> surplus

> > > population.” — Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

> > >

> > > Palin was right.

> > > Boehner — make that Speaker-elect of the House Boehner — was

> > > right.

> > > While Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and

> > > presumably not

> > > paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story ironically

> > > dated

> > > Christmas Day — a holiday celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace

> —

> > > reported the following:

> > >

> > > Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

> > > WASHINGTON — 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.

> > > In other words, the 2009 charge leveled by former Alaska Governor

> > > Palin

> > > and the then-House Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to

> > set

> > > up

> > > what Palin termed government “death panels” — panels that Boehner said

> > > would set

> > > the government on the road to euthanasia — is no longer a charge.

> > > It’s reality. By executive fiat — in this case a new Medicare rule

> issued

> > > by

> > > Obama Medicare chief Dr. Berwick.

> > > Palin, who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009

> during

> > > the

> > > health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning

> > > political

> > > attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this about the

> > > prospect

> > > of death panels:

> > > And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the

> > elderly,

> > > and

> > > the disabled, of course. 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.

> > > Her famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly

> dropped

> > by

> > >

> > > Congress.

> > > Now, with Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring

> Washington

> > > momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its

> > death

> > > panel

> > > goal anyway, as the Times now admits. Says the paper of the new

> Christmas

> > > death

> > > panel regulation that replaces medical science and voluntary private

> > > judgment

> > > with the inevitable pressure of politicized health care:

> > > Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept

> > > quiet.

> > > They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans

> > > seized

> > > on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill

> > > would

> > > allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

> > > Which is another way of saying something else: Governor Palin has been

> > > vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated.

> > > And Palin’s critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all

> > > over

> > > their faces. Obama’s Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most hotly

> > > controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a

> > > conservative

> > > ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress. With no less

> than

> > > Boehner himself taking the gavel from Pelosi as the new Speaker

> of

> > > the

> > > House.

> > > What does this new rule say and do, exactly?

> > > It inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as

> > > Palin

> > > said was Obama’s intention. Not, as was true of its original

> legislative

> > > formulation, every five years. But annually.

> > >

> > > No one of any sense objects to an individual and doctor having

> > end-of-life

> > > discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the

> > Obama

> > > administration and its obsession for control wants the government to

> > > incentivize

> > > the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a system that on its

> > face

> > >

> > > pressures the most deeply vulnerable of Americans in the most Orwellian

> > of

> > > terms

> > > to end their lives.

> > > Control and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step

> > > philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal.

> > And

> > > the

> > > Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on Christmas

> > Day

> > > when

> > > it no one is looking, is a perfect example — if hardly the only example

> —

> > > of how

> > > the Obama Administration views its role. Control and pressure. Pressure

> > and

> > >

> > > control.

> > > Versus the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and

> > freedom.

> > > Says the Times of the Obama Administration’s justification for its

> > > secretive

> > > move to mandate death panels by regulatory fiat:

> > > In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of

> > > end-of-life planning.

> > > Research? What research could possibly justify a government-sponsored

> > > annual

> > > attempt to pressure a poor, disabled, or elderly American into

> believing

> > > that

> > > they would be better off dead because they’re costing society too much

> > > money?

> > >

> > > British research. Says the Times:

> > > “Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family

> > > satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving

> > > relatives,”

> > > the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation,

> > quoting

> > >

> > > research published this year in the British Medical Journal.”

> > > You read that right.

> > > British research is being cited in the preamble of this Medicare death

> > > panel

> > > rule as a justification for the new rule — a stunning turn of events

> that

> > > will

> > > surely launch a firestorm over trying to remodel the American health

> care

> > > system

> > > after the hotly criticized British health care system. A system that

> > makes

> > > no

> > > pretense of politically rationed health care.

> > > Part of the furor launched over Palin’s remarks was the discovery by

> > > millions of

> > > frightened Americans that Obama health care bureaucrats admired the

> > British

> > >

> > > health care system — where the government in fact rations health care

> on

> > a

> > > political basis and decides who should live or die based on what is

> > called

> > > the

> > > “QALY” — Quality-Adjusted Life Year. This has been discussed previously

> > in

> > > this

> > > space — in fact just over a week before Governor Palin wrote her

> Facebook

> > > statement. It has also been discussed by health care consultant

> > > Catron

> > > here where he explained how the QALY system worked.

> > >

> > > In Catron’s words: “A year of perfect health, for example, is given a

> > value

> > > of

> > > 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you

> > are

> > >

> > > confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half

> > that

> > > of

> > > your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low.

> > All

> > > that

> > > remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà,

> your

> > > life

> > > has a price tag.”

> > > Princeton’s controversial Dr. Singer, a liberal and big believer

> in

> > > the

> > > British health care system, happily related the British politicization

> of

> > > medical decisions in a New York Times Magazine article during all of

> > this,

> > > an

> > > instance in which “Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical

> > > Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National Health

> > > Service

> > > should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer.” Why? The

> government

> > > said it

> > > was too expensive and therefore simply denied the drug. This in turn

> led

> > to

> > > a

> > > furious reaction even from stiff-upper-lip Brits with charges their

> > > government

> > > was “immoral” and willing to let patients die.

> > >

> > > Grudgingly, the drug was eventually approved. But not before one angry

> > > British

> > > woman, whose husband’s life was at stake, angrily asked: “What price is

> > > life?”

> > > As this is written the Obama Food and Drug Administration is now taking

> > > Americans down this same path, rejecting the breast cancer drug Avastin

> > > with

> > > what many are citing as unbelievable science — but very believable

> > > political

> > > concerns that the drug is, in the bureaucrats’ view, too expensive.

> > Thereby

> > >

> > > inserting the judgment of political bureaucrats for medical science —

> and

> > > the

> > > freedom of patients to order the drug. Here’s this from the Heartland

> > > Institute:

> > > According to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute,

> > the

> > > FDA’s

> > > decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on

> the

> > > expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as

> > $90,000

> > > per

> > > year for a single patient.

> > > The FDA claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin’s cost and

> was

> > > based

> > > solely on the drug’s medical effectiveness,” Pipes said. “This isn’t

> > > believable.

> > > Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast cancer. Avastin

> is

> > > the

> > > last hope for many not to meet that fate. While the drug is costly, it

> > > often

> > > provides immense benefits to patients.

> > > Somewhere an American woman with breast cancer is surely saying the

> same

> > > thing

> > > as her British counterpart: “What price is life?”

> > > Singer had an answer. Really. Said the famous Bioethics professor:

> “Life

> > as

> > > a

> > > whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell

> us,

> > > in a

> > > chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation

> and

> > > natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any

> > overall

> > >

> > > purpose.”

> > > Thus, since life really has no overall purpose, the government should

> be

> > in

> > > the

> > > business of using Medicare to pressure the poor, the disabled and the

> > > elderly

> > > that — nudge, nudge — isn’t it time to bid the planet hasta la vista?

> > > WHICH BRINGS US TO DR. DONALD BERWICK himself, the Obama

> administration’s

> > > Medicare recess-appointed head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid

> > > Services.

> > > Dr. Berwick personally issued the Christmas Death Panel Rule,

> confirming

> > in

> > >

> > > spades why he received a recess appointment from Obama. It was clear to

> > > Senate

> > > Democrats that Berwick’s chances of surviving a Senate confirmation

> > battle

> > > were

> > > iffy at best.

> > >

> > > Why? Precisely because Berwick was well on record as expressing his

> deep

> > > admiration — make that lust — for the British government run system,

> > > saying: “I

> > > am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. …The NHS is

> one

> > > of the

> > > astounding human endeavors of modern times.”

> > > So Obama waited until he could skip a Senate debate and vote entirely

> and

> > > just

> > > recess-appoint Berwick — who in turn is doing exactly what his record

> > > suggested

> > > he would do.

> > > Sure enough, the philosophy used by the British is precisely what

> Berwick

> > > used

> > > to describe the new Berwick Rule. Reported the Times of Berwick:

> > > “Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,”

> Dr.

> > > Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques,

> > > including

> > > advance directives and involvement of patients and families in

> > > decision-making,

> > > have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life,

> leading

> > to

> > > both

> > > lower cost and more humane care.”

> > > So. What do we have here?

> > > The death panels were written into the original version of ObamaCare.

> > > Governor Palin, speaking out in her famous Facebook post, pulled back

> the

> > > shroud

> > > surrounding this horrifying idea. Less noticed at the time — but

> > > undoubtedly a

> > > headline grabber now — Minority Leader Boehner agreed, citing alarm

> over

> > > government sponsored euthanasia. Said Boehner:

> > > Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care

> > > providers

> > > to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on “the use of

> > > artificially

> > > administered nutrition and hydration” and other end of life treatments,

> > and

> > > may

> > > place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of

> life

> > > directives they would not otherwise sign. This provision may start us

> > down

> > > a

> > > treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted

> into

> > > law.

> > >

> > > Obama protested he had no intention of “pulling the plug on Grandma” —

> > but

> > > the

> > > idea, embodied in Section 1233 of the House version of the bill, was

> > pulled

> > > from

> > > the final bill in part because of Palin’s — and Boehner’s — focused

> > > attention.

> > > Obama installs Dr. Berwick to head the Medicare program as a

> > recess

> > > appointment because Berwick’s controversial enthusiastic embrace of the

> > > British

> > > health care system and its death panel procedures would have prevented

> > his

> > > confirmation.

> > > On Christmas day 2010, the Times reports the death panel idea will

> become

> > a

> > >

> > > Medicare rule on January 1, 2011 — that would be four days from today.

> > How?

> > > By

> > > fiat. As a government Medicare “rule” or “regulation” as put forth by

> the

> > > government agency now run by Dr. Berwick.

> > >

> > > The rule is justified because Berwick believes the government must

> > “reduce

> > > inappropriate care at the end of life” A Berwick spokesman says the

> > > government

> > > should be saying to elderly patients, vulnerable patients, disabled

> > > patients —

> > > patients like Palin’s famous Down’s syndrome son: “When the time

> > > comes, do

> > > you want us to use technology to try and delay your death?” Nudge.

> > > D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life

> > > educational

> > > organization, says of the new rule: “The infamous Section 1233 is still

> > > alive

> > > and kicking. Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at

> the

> > > end of

> > > life.”

> > > Oh yes. Did we mention no one was supposed to know about all of this?

> > > Congressman Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who wrote the original

> > > provision in the House version of ObamaCare that was unmasked by

> > > Palin,

> > > has put the word out to his allies. Says the Congressman’s office in an

> > > e-mail

> > > to his allies:

> > > While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from

> the

> > > rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could

> be

> > > modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this

> > > small

> > > provision to perpetuate the “death panel” myth.

> > > We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of

> > your

> > > lists, even if they are “supporters” — e-mails can too easily be

> > > forwarded…Thus

> > > far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be

> > > keeping

> > > a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted

> > > response.

> > > The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.

> > >

> > > No wonder Blumenauer wants to keep this quiet.

> > > Did you catch that word “us” in the sentence from Dr. Berwick’s

> > > spokesperson?

> > > Here’s the sentence again:

> > > When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay

> > your

> > >

> > > death?

> > > The word “us” refers not to a doctor and his patient. It refers to the

> > > government.

> > > When Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel was cited by

> longtime

> > > health

> > > care expert Betsy McCaughey as discussing the idea that patients with

> > > dementia

> > > should be denied treatment, Emanuel’s defenders (he is also the brother

> > of

> > > ex-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) floated a Time

> magazine

> > > story

> > > saying Emanuel “only mentioned dementia in a discussion of theoretical

> > > approaches, not an endorsement of a particular policy.”

> > >

> > > Oblivious to the fact that that no less than the President himself

> > > expressed a

> > > version of the same sentiment (as has Berwick) when he went on national

> > > television to answer a woman’s observation that at over a hundred her

> > > mother was

> > > very vital with a lot of spirit, and shouldn’t that be taken into

> account

> > > in any

> > > government health care decision? Said Obama: “I don’t think that we can

> > > make

> > > judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That would be a pretty subjective

> > > decision

> > > to be making. I think we have to have rules….”

> > > Government rules. Like the rule just issued by Dr. Berwick.

> > > A rule that effectively is now going to bully individuals — doubtless

> > many

> > > of

> > > them poor, disabled or elderly. Ironically creating a system where you

> > will

> > > only

> > > escape Obama’s government sponsored Big Chill if you are, say, a rich

> > > liberal.

> > > In effect the administration is trying to bully Congress by making an

> > > end-run

> > > with a regulation because Congress said no to Section 1233.

> > > The Heritage Foundation has accurately noted yesterday that, quite

> aside

> > > from

> > > the substance here — the new Berwick death panel rule or the FCC’s new

> > net

> > > neutrality rules and so on — the real issue is the Obama

> administration’s

> > > clear

> > > intent to govern by executive fiat now that it has lost control of the

> > > House

> > > and, effectively, the Senate as well. Government-by-Obama fiat will be

> > the

> > > subject of a furious struggle in the new Congress.

> > > Says Heritage by way of focusing on a return to government by elected

> > > officials

> > > rather than a central government of rule-making un-elected bureaucrats:

> > > “There is also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to

> > > review and

> > > overrule regulations issued by government agencies.”

> > >

> > > Which is to say, the Berwick rule can be undone — if the Congress

> orders

> > it

> > >

> > > undone.

> > > This episode is a reminder that Governor Palin took a lot of heat for

> > > bringing

> > > attention to this issue. No one expects her critics — now proven wrong

> by

> > > Berwick — to give her any credit for being right. Or for that matter to

> > the

> > > new

> > > Speaker Boehner.

> > > But the fact remains that Palin has shown leadership here — one might

> > call

> > > it

> > > presidential-style leadership — in persisting with an issue that is now

> > > coming

> > > back to bite the American people in the form of a new Medicare rule on

> > > death

> > > panels — reported of all days on Christmas day.

> > > No wonder Boehner will be Speaker of the House.

> > > From:

> > >

> http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/28/berwick-sets-up-death-panels-b

> > > By Lord on 12.28.

> > >

> >

> > ------------------------------------

> >

> >

[Guest guest]

No sale and I do not subscribe to reversed speech nonsense.

oh - and I am a certified hypnotherapist.

Obama's speeches are usually excellent examples of NLP

Make what you will of that Chuck.

some discussion here

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message649781/pg1