Senator Chuck Grassley addresses crowd at townhall meeting
in Adel, IA. Source: The Des Moines Register
The Senate Finance Committee decided to exclude Section 1233 of HR 3200 which would authorize end-of-life consultations. You know the never existing "death panels?" Townhall meetings and tons of emails seem to be getting through to Members of Congress (at least the ones who would like to keep their jobs). The Hill reports:
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia.
"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly." (read the rest)
This issue has been far from being debunked, as some would claim. There isn't consensus. No one is saying that "death panel" and euthanasia language exists in the bill, but the implication is there. There is wiggle room, and it could be interpreted that way. Don't think so? Look at Oregon and see what rationing health care can get you. So score one for Governor Sarah Palin, she was right on this issue and it needed to be framed in philosophical terms that Americans can understand.
Right Wing News is encouraging anyone not to get too excited about this, as this is the House version of the bill. We have yet to see the Senate version. Palin warns that this wasn't "the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones." Senator Grassley would still be wise to walk away from this mess. The fact that he hasn't, has made his constituents nervous, as could be seen in his townhall meetings (however they did go a lot better than Senator Tom Harkin's meetings).
Keep melting the phones and keep testing Congress' server capability. We've only just begun.
Contact: Shane Vander Hart
Source: Caffeinated Thoughts
Publish Date: August 14, 2009
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