A Rose by an other name....or a Death Panel by any other name

Well, it won't smell as sweet as a rose, but it will still be a death panel.  We may be older folks but we aren't stupid. Read this from Investor's.com:

Will Congress Kill 'Death Panel 2.0'?
By JOHN MERLINE
In the year since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the individual mandate requiring Americans to buy insurance or pay a fine has attracted the most attention.

Another key ObamaCare feature has received little notice, but could end up just as controversial.

It goes by the mundane name of the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

A growing and bipartisan array of critics says it will end up rationing care for seniors and is pushing to scrap IPAB entirely. Some of its fiercest opponents have even resurrected the "death panel" label.

Under the law, the president would appoint 15 experts to the board. Starting in 2014, it would be charged with making sure Medicare hits specific spending targets. Because IPAB can't touch benefits, deductibles or co-payments, those cuts would largely focus on provider fees.

Once the board has made up its mind, its cuts would automatically take effect, unless Congress agrees on an alternative package or can get a supermajority to block IPAB's plan. And IPAB decisions would be immune from administrative or judicial review.

By insulating IPAB from politics, it can more effectively manage Medicare costs, the argument goes. Prominent backers include Obama. But several Democrats have come out against it.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has said the IPAB risks "the health of America's seniors and people with disabilities." Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., in April "strongly" urged her colleagues to sign onto a GOP-led IPAB repeal bill.

The head of the pro-ObamaCare AARP told the New York Times recently that "relying on arbitrary spending targets is not a good way to make health policy, especially when decisions may be left to the unelected and unaccountable."

Groups from the Healthcare Leadership Council to the National Retail Federation back repeal.

You can read it all here.

Death Books for Veterans? You Decide

From the Wall Street Journal Online
Death Books for Veterans
Ex-Soldiers don't need to be told they are a burden on society.
by Jim Towey

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

This is just the first half of a piece that is very sympathetic to the returning vets of this war and others. Go read it all

Health Care in the UK

A Real Life Victim Of An NHS Death Panel
By
AJ Strata of the Strata Sphere

This heart rending story of a deadly botched test on a young woman not only underscores how the ‘death panels’ operate, it thrusts the human tragedy of government run health care deep into one’s soul:
Mrs Brickell, first asked for a smear test at the age of 19 but was told she didn’t need one until she was 20-years-old. A year later, when she returned to her doctor, she was told that the age had been raised to 25. At 23, she was diagnosed with an incurable cervical cancer.

My oldest daughter is 24, and this just tears at my heart. This woman has been condemned to die by a faceless, cost obsessed death panel trying to skimp on costs by delaying a simple, life saving and inexpensive test. This is Obamacare if we go with a government run health care system. This is unacceptable.

This is the entire post, but go give the Strata Sphere a look.

"Death Panels" by any other Name

The Strata Sphere blog has a good article by AJ Strata:

Update: Sarah Palin comes out again today, noting as I did, this is not about end-of-life consultations, it is about the core essence of any cheap, government run healthcare system - end update.

The liberals are now all up in arms because someone (i.e., Governor Sarah Palin) was finally able to label the core problem with any and all government run health care options. That label is “death panels”, and it is very appropriate and accurate, and is only marginally attached to end-of-life consultations.

Today’s liberal know-it-alls march around with the pompous, busy-body attitude reflecting a modern day inquisition. They tell everyone how to think, how to live, how to talk to each other, what myths to follow (global warming comes to mind). And if we lowly peasants violate these holy liberals we are chastised, attacked and can be punished under the law for our digressions from orthodoxy.

Interestingly, right now the opponents of the liberals’ government run dreams of conquest don’t need to theorize or extrapolate about the possible outcomes, because the UK clearly shows us all where a government run health care ‘option’ will lead us. What they are going through now, in terms of ‘cost savings’, is what ANY government controlled health spending program for individuals will end up. And realize, this is not about consultations – it is about cost savings (aka ‘cheap healthcare’, ‘affordable health care’, ‘universal access’, etc) and how the liberal inquisitors will chose the worthy......

So, how does the government save/not spend money on health care? Let’s hear from President Obama’s lead architect and advisor, in his own words (which he is today trying to deny are his words) on how this can be accomplished:
Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Read it all at the Strata Sphere (this is a long article and well worth reading) and go to the ABC news blog for all the quotes from Zeke Emanuel.