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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...

In case you haven't heard, President Obama is a member of a secret Kenyan terrorist cell who is scheming to dispatch waves of government bureaucrats to tell grandmas and grandpas how to off themselves. Such is the intellectual weight of a segment of the Republican Party these days. Or as one commentator recently put it, the GOP has decided "to double down on crazy." We're talking about two controversies here, one involving the so-called birther movement, which questions the citizenship of the president; the other involving mandatory "end-of-life" counseling that's supposedly part of the president's health care plan. The controversies...

Congress: In exchange for a vague promise of cuts in the cost of health care "reform," a few fiscally conservative Democrats agree to release the bill to a September floor vote. Have the pit bulls become Chihuahuas?Apparently even a Blue Dog Democrat will stop growling if you toss him a big enough bone. Four of the seven who helped keep the House bill bottled up in the Energy and Commerce Committee — Mike Ross of Arkansas, Baron Hill of Indiana, Zack Space of Ohio and Bart Gordon of Tennessee — agreed to vote the bill out of committee in exchange...

As a physician who has authored books on preventative health care, I was given the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner at The Capitol Building in Washington last Friday (7/17). The presentation was entitled Health Care Reform, The Power & Profit of Prevention, and I was gratified that it was well received. In preparation for the presentation, I read the latest version of "reform" as authored by The Obama Administration and supported by Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid. Here is the link to the 1,018 page document: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pd Let me summarize just a few salient points...

Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.