Free Republic

First, the bad news. For the first time since 1975, Social Security recipients are being told they won't be receiving an annual cost of living increase in their monthly benefits. At the same time, their Medicare premiums will go up, so monthly checks will actually shrink next year. Not to worry, though. Here's the good news. Seniors may not have to live on such meager funds for long because the government is going to help them plan how they want to die. This benevolent plan is in Section 1233 (p. 424) of the health care reform bill known as "America's...

First, the bad news. For the first time since 1975, Social Security recipients are being told they won't be receiving an annual cost of living increase in their monthly benefits. At the same time, their Medicare premiums will go up, so monthly checks will actually shrink next year. Not to worry, though. Here's the good news. Seniors may not have to live on such meager funds for long because the government is going to help them plan how they want to die. This benevolent plan is in Section 1233 (p. 424) of the health care reform bill known as "America's...

On Fox News Special Report today (September 3rd), Bret Baier revealed that under socialized medicine, British doctors are concerned about some terminally-ill patients being forced to die prematurely. Is this what we can expect from the end-of-life “care and counseling” from HR 3200? VIDEO: Death Panels Real in Europe

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Question with boldness." That is the motto of radio host and FOX News television host Glenn Beck, who says he asks questions no different than ordinary Americans - he just has an army of researchers to help him explore these questions. But what the question explores is the disturbing relationship between eugenics, Nazism, and the imposition of Obama's health care plan upon the United States.Like the old adage "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," Beck has looked back to the past to get a glimpse of the future....

Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead. The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and intrusiveness but also at the mendacity with which it is being sold. You don't need a PhD to see that the promise to expand coverage and reduce costs is a crude deception, or that cutting $500 billion from Medicare without affecting care is a fiction. But there is an exit strategy. And a politically clever one, if the Democrats are smart enough to seize it. (1) Forget the public option. Whatever the...

The Obama administration claims that a health care takeover by government won't restrict access to care. Everybody will get more care for less money, the president has said. Of course, something has to give. One likely target for rationing will be care in the later stages of life. Bureaucratic disregard for the value of all life is insinuated in a government manual known as "the Death Book." The Death Book is a nickname given to an advice manual published by the Department of Veterans Affairs that instructs veterans "how to prepare a personalized living will." Officially titled, "Your Life, Your...

Most measures taken when patients are terminally ill, including the use of feeding tubes, ventilators and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, do nothing to prolong meaningful life. Rather, as Dr. Jeff Gordon put it in the title of his new book, they represent “A Death Prolonged.”

UPDATE: Earlier today, I noted that the "Your Life, Your Choices" booklet had apparently been removed from the VA site. The Department of Veterans' Affairs was kind enough to get back to me several hours after I called, in order to clarify what happened today on their website. Spokeswoman Katie Roberts informs me that although the "Your Life, Your Choices" booklet was removed this morning from the URL I had linked to, there has been no policy change by VA. The document removed this morning had simply been hosted in the wrong place all along, on a regional part of...

Dr. Robert A. PEARLMAN wrote the book. He works for the VA and is well known as a supporter of Physician Assisted Suicide. Pearlman's book for the VA specifically refers Veterans to an organization fronting for the HEMLOCK SOCIETY, which promotes suicide. Pearlman's writing is cited in the literature prominently along with another supporter of Physician Assisted Suicide: Ezekial Emmanuel, brother of Obama's chief of staff RAHM EMMANUEL. Pearlman also touts his role as a "Faculty Scholar" in the "Project on Death in America." This project is funded by GEORGE SOROS. Yes, THAT George Soros. And yes, the real...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Some terminally ill patients in Oregon who turned to their state for health care were denied treatment and offered doctor-assisted suicide instead, a proposal some experts have called a "chilling" corruption of medical ethics. Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon's state-run health plan for help. Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to Stroup's request with a letter saying the state would...

The Wall Street Journal just published a shocking editorial written by a respected University President, confirming the Obama Administration is now using VA hospitals to order doctors to pressure all military veterans to sign "pull the plug" do-not-resuscitate orders, hastening their premature deaths through mandatory "end of life" counseling. President Jim Towey of Saint Vincent's College, founder of the non-profit "Aging With Dignity" and former White House Director of faith based initiatives, wrote a blistering expose entitled "The Death Book For Veterans," revealing President Obama's new Veterans Administration (VA) directive, presumably signed by VA Secretary, General (ret.) Eric Shinseki, which...

For once, mainstream journalists did not retreat to the studied neutrality of quoting dueling antagonists. They tried to perform last rites on the ludicrous claim about President Obama's death panels, telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you've got to quit making things up. But it didn't matter. The story refused to die. The crackling, often angry debate over health-care reform has severely tested the media's ability to untangle a story of immense complexity. In many ways, news organizations have risen to the occasion; in others they have become agents of distortion. But even when they report the facts, they have had...

Here is video of Assistant Sec. of Veteran's Affairs Tammy Duckworth on Fox News Sunday being challenged by Chris Wallace about the booklet used by the Veteran's Administration to do "end of life counseling" with elderly or ill veterans about whether their "life is worth living." Critics have referred to it as a "Death Book for Veterans." Duckworth is a veteran herself, and a hero, but she was totally wrong in this segment about whether this booklet is being used with veterans. She claimed it is not being used, but Wallace demonstrated that it is being used. She claims it...

Here is video of Jim Towey on Fox News Sunday discussing a document being used by the Veteran's Administration (called by some a "Death Book") since July by new directive that he says essentially encourages Veterans who are badly ill to "hurry up and die." The document is now being used at "end of life" counseling and was written by Dr. Robert Perlman, a man whom Towey says advocated "assisted suicide" before the Supreme Court. Of particular concern is a worksheet on page 12 that leads patients to consider "is my life worth living?" It asks the patient questions like,...

Here is video of Sen. Charles Grassley on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, and pointing out that it was President Obama who first used the phrase "pull the plug on Grandma." Grassley has been criticized by Democrats for using that type of phrase, but he did so only to make it clear that Government and politicians have no business meddling in the decision-making process as people face end-of-life decisions. . . . (Watch Video)

Sen. Specter Calling for Hearings into End of Life Guide for Vets The Department of Veterans Affairs is under increasing scrutiny this week after it was revealed a controversial end of life counseling pamphlet may be revived and distributed to veterans. The guide called "Your Life, Your Choices," was originally suspended under the Bush Administration, but it is apparently being brought back by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Jim Towey, a former Bush Administration official, brought the revival to national prominence this week with an article in the Wall Street Journal, which outlined his criticisms of the booklet. When asked...

Senator McCain in an interview with George Stephanopolis this morning supported Sarah Panel's concern over the end of life provisions in the Democratic health bills.

A prominent senator on the Veterans' Affairs Committee on Sunday called for hearings to scrutinize and consider suspending a guide for veterans' end-of-life care which one former Bush official says sends a "hurry-up-and-die" message to troops. The guide, called "Your Life, Your Choices," was suspended under the Bush administration but has been revived under the current Department of Veterans Affairs. Jim Towey, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, told "FOX News Sunday" that the pamphlet makes injured veterans feel like a burden, encourages the severely injured to die and should be tossed out. Asked about the...

August 21, 2009 01:10 PM EDT Wallace Unplugged: End-of-Life Counseling "Wallace Unplugged" on the real story behind Veterans' health care and end-of-life counseling. ... This Week on Fox News Sunday: (8/23/09) Amid charges of "Death Panels", Chris Wallace uncovers explosive new information about a "death book", already being used by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, that encourages the nations' veterans to pull the plug. This Sunday we’ll take a look at how this controversial book steers users towards a predetermined outcome from the man who took down the program during the Bush Administration. Plus, we'll bring you a reaction from...

Although President Obama and liberal Congressional Democrats have denounced claims that the health care reform establishes "death panels," it does not help reassure the American public that the nation's foremost pro-euthanasia group is actively pushing "end-of-life counseling" as a centerpiece of health-care reforms. Compassion & Choices, a rebranding of the former Hemlock Society, aggressively lobbies to legalize euthanasia as a "human right" by means of legislation and the judicial system. But the group has revealed that it is a major player behind incorporating a measure (sec. 1233) of the "American Affordable Choices Act of 2009" (HR 3200) that would pay...

Here is video of New York Democrat Rep. Eric Massa talking to Leftist activists at the Netroots Nation Meeting last weekend where he said that Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley had committed an "act of treason" by what he said last week regarding ObamaCare. He appears to be referring to Grassley's pointed remarks that ObamaCare, if adopted, could lead to politicians and bureaucrats injecting themselves into "end of life" decisions that families have to make. Massa also said in conversation to activists at the same meeting that he was prepared to vote for ObamaCare "against the interests of his own district"...

Betsy McCaughey -- an outspoken proponent of the myth that Democrats' health care reform proposals will lead to the creation of "death panels," as well as a former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute -- has stepped down from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp., which bills itself as a "leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market." From a press release: CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN -- News) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a...

LifeNews.com Note: Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of many books, including "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance" (Seven Stories Press, 2003). I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the...

After I posted this last night, many people had more questions about this story. This article is an update that hopefully answers those questions. Please feel free to comment and I can ask the author to clarify if needed.

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...

Frustrated liberals have a question for President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers: Isn't it time the other guys gave a little ground on health care? What's the point of a bipartisan bill, they ask, if we're making all the concessions? A case in point: Sen. Charles Grassley, a key Republican negotiator on health care, was on a winning streak as Congress recessed for August, having wrung important concessions from Democrats, including an agreement not to tax employer-provided health insurance and a limit to demands on drug companies. How did Grassley reciprocate? With an attack that struck Democrats as stunning and...

Your local newspaper, as has mine, has likely carried Associated Press stories asserting that the notion of "death panels" has been debunked. Here is a fair-use quote from the lead paragraph of a front-page, above-the-fold, AP story, dated 15 Auguest, by AP writer Liz Sidoti: "he challenged the debunked notion" Google on this phrase or "debunked AND death panels". You will find a large number of media assertions, including some from the AP, simply asserting that the death panel notion has been debunked.

"Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the health care bill... AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many other conservatives is false and misleading. The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the...

....Yes, Canada, England, Europe, China etc all have some form of universal health care. That is great. They also have limitations to a free press, less innovation, bad economies and less freedoms. The United States represents 26% of world GDP. The next largest economy is 1/3 the size of the United States. The United States went from a start up 230 years ago to the most powerful country in the world. Did that happen because of the greatness of our government actions or the greatness of our people? Should the United States follow the path of others, or set the...

Section 1233 would have Medicare pay doctors to counsel seniors on "end-of-life" matters once every five years - or more if the patient's health is dicey. Obama's supporters have forwarded to me links to Politifact.org and FactCheck.org, which have examined Section 1233 [of HR 3200], and conclude nothing sinister is in the bill. Several facts are missing, however. The man who wrote Section 1233, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., advocates euthanasia or, as he calls it on his Web site, "Death with Dignity." In 2005, as the Bush administration challenged Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law, Blumenauer issued a statement criticizing the...

GOP backs away from end-of-life counselingBy BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer Ben Evans, Associated Press Writer – 44 mins ago WASHINGTON – Until last week, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was among the most enthusiastic backers of end-of-life counseling in government health care programs like Medicare. That was before conservatives called it a step toward euthanasia and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin likened the idea to a bureaucratic "death panel" that would decide whether sick people get to live. And even though those claims have been widely discredited, the issue remains a political weapon in the increasingly bitter health care debate....

@ 8:23 am by Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) praised a Senate committee's decision to drop an end-of-life provision from its healthcare reform bill, but continued to pound away at the overall bill — especially a proposal by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. "It's gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress," Palin said in a new note on her Facebook page posted early Friday morning of the Senate Finance Committee's decision to drop end-of-life consultations from its health bill. (The Alaska politician had derided those consultations as "death panels" seeking to aid the euthanasia of...

The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks. Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality. But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite...

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the health-policy adviser at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget -- who has been caricatured by conservatives as a “Dr. Death” seeking to pull the I.V.s out of your grandparents’ arms in the name of cost containment -- is not happy. Asked by ABC News in an interview about the thoroughly discredited claim by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to paint his philosophical writings as evidence -- along with a provision providing optional end of life counseling in the House Democrats’ health care reform bill -- that President Obama wants to set up “death panels”...

Listening to a Fox Radio "News" Break at 5 PM Eastern Time, Shepard Smith refers to the health care end of life provision and states matter of factly the provision spawned "ridiculous references to death panels". In the next breath he reports the provision has been dropped from at least one version of the bill. Well, guess the objections weren't so "ridiculous" then, huh? Just remember Fox News is not a reliable friend of conservatives, certainly Shepard Smith is not. Also makes you wonder about White House attacks on Fox, when even Fox can commit outright bias in favor of...

In what can fairly be described as an admission that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin knew what she was talking about, the Senate Finance Committee Thursday dropped language from its bipartisan healthcare reform package that Palin and others had suggested would eventually lead to mandated end-of-life counseling sessions for seniors. Supporters of Obamacare, including President Barack Obama, had accused Palin and others of being dishonest in suggesting the counseling sessions would somehow lead to the government encouraging euthanasia as a cost-cutting measure as part of rationed care. "The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow...

..THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here. So how do you — how do we deal with it? THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that...

The Senate Finance Committee, which is trying to craft a bipartisan health care reform bill, will drop a provision which mandates consultations for end-of-life care from the measure, according to the ranking Republican member. Author and talk show host Tammy Bruce says the committee's decision is the result of Palin Power. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a statement Thursday announcing that the committee will drop the controversial provision after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, in a series of statements on her Facebook page, criticized "death panels" that conservatives say would encourage the practice of euthanasia: "On the Finance Committee, we...

Palin Power: Senate Removes ‘End of Life’ Provisions by Tammy on August 13, 2009 · 9 comments Palin, apparently an irrelevant quitter yet strangely powerful typer, forces the Senate to do the right thing with two Facebook posts. This is called leadership and will prevail regardless of the medium. It also speaks to the impact and import of Palin’s positions despite the establishments, both political and media, insistence (aka strange, misplaced hope) that she’s irrelevant. Palin responded again last night on Facebook to attacks on her exposure of the Death Panels as part of Obama’s DeathCare agenda. This time she...

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 being derided as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia by conservatives. "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...

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who is working with Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus on a health care compromise, has just issued a statement saying that concerns about end-of-life issues in the House health care bill are entirely legitimate. In addition, Grassley says the Finance Committee has "dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely" because of those fears and also because of concerns that they could be "implemented incorrectly."

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care. The President made light of these concerns. He said: “Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the...

Why do the British lag behind American survival rates? Screening standards are different. In the United States, internists recommend that men 50 and older get screened for colon cancer; in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, screening begins at 75. And British patients wait much longer to see specialists. A Clinical Oncology study of British lung cancer treatment found in 2000 that 20% "of potentially curable patients became incurable on the waiting list." Novel drugs offered here often aren't available there; for instance, Avastin, a drug for advanced colon cancer, is prescribed more often in the U.S. than...

August 07, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Government Medicine KillsThe U.K. and Canada prove it. By Deroy Murdock Imagine that your two best friends are British and Canadian tobacco addicts. The Brit battles lung cancer. The Canadian endures emphysema and wheezes as he walks around with clanging oxygen canisters. You probably would not think: “Maybe I should pick up smoking.� The fact that America is even considering government medicine is equally wacky. The state guides health care for our two closest allies: Great Britain and Canada. Like us, these are prosperous, industrial, Anglophone democracies. Nevertheless, compared to America, they suffer higher...

Health Care: There might not be a "death panel," as Sarah Palin described it, but federal bureaucrats will be making end-of-life decisions. That's why state-run medicine is a leading cause of death in Britain and Canada.A post on the former Alaska governor's Facebook page has caused a stir by discussing openly what many privately fear and something we have written about. End-of-life counseling and efforts to measure cost-effectiveness of treatment will combine in a perfect storm to ration care in a way that lets the government decide who lives and who dies. "The America I know and love is not...

Barbara Wagner’s doctor hoped a new chemotherapy drug would help her, but the Oregon Health Plan told her the treatment was not approved. On the bright side, they offered to have her killed.

I have had many questions and comments regarding the PDF file of the House Democrat Health Care plan I made available for download on my site, HERE. Most are, as am I, appalled at the plan and the wording of it...particularly when taken in context with the cited quote and views of the chief architect of the plan, and chief advisor to Obama on Health Care and Policy advisor to the Democratic Congress on HEalth Care, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, HERE. Some however attempt to rationalize, or even make statements regarding the plan that just are not there, are not supported...

It may be too late for President Obama to convince Americans that the End-of-Life provision in the ObamaCare health care reform bill doesn't exist. The less he is trusted, the less convinced the public believes what he says. And the longer Obama is in office, the more the American public is beginning to compare what he says with reality.

Freshman Congressman Bobby Bright (D-AL) is spending the August break navigating the lush green backcountry of his south Alabama district. He started Wednesday with a "meet and greet" at Sister's Restaurant in Troy over a vegetable plate and fried cornbread. But the chitchat quickly turned from the fine southern food to the health care proposals before Congress. Retired Air Force Officer Bob Lambert doesn't want a single payer plan. "We have the best health care in the world. I have friends in Canada that have called me and said, 'Don't you dare go into this system because, you know, if...

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure Discourse: At a town hall last week in Dallas, an elderly "mob" with "manufactured" outrage questioned AARP's support for nationalized health care, asking: "Do you work for us or do we work for you?"There were no swastika-wearing grannies at Tuesday's meeting, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might claim. Nor were they "taking their cues from talk show hosts, Internet rumor-mongers . . . and insurance rackets," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said. But they were mad as hell at the perception that AARP was selling them out in the...