Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

SUN EDITORIAL:

Facts under attack

Intent of proposed health care provision is being lost among demonstrators’ distortions

Current hysteria about “government death panels” and “euthanasia of senior citizens” grew out of a small provision contained within health care reform legislation being considered by House committees.

The provision, as written, would enable senior citizens to be informed by their personal doctors of their many options regarding what is known as “end-of-life care.” It would also allow seniors to clearly record their preferences.

This would leave family members, in cases where a loved one is suddenly unable to communicate because of an illness, well prepared to choose the most appropriate options.

Many seniors and their doctors are having such deeply personal consulations. The only real difference under the proposed legislation is that the doctors involved would be able to bill Medicare for their services, rather than billing the seniors who are their patients.

Seniors would be covered under Medicare for one consultation every five years, or more frequently if they were seriously ill. The consultations would not be mandatory and they would not involve government-appointed doctors, as many people attacking President Barack Obama’s push to reform health care are absurdly claiming.

And the malicious claim, promoted by Sarah Palin and hundreds of other right-wing radicals, that the consultations would be conducted by “death panels” with the power to end health care for seniors is, of course, false.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who introduced the provision, is known for being passionate about bow ties, urban bicycle trails and community safety. Now he is spending a lot of time refuting the people who are distorting his work on health care reform. He accuses Palin, for example, of deliberately lying.

This week Blumenauer, 60, told the Associated Press, “This is the starkest example I’ve ever seen of how, if we’re not careful, political discourse dissolves into some type of partisan cage-fighting, where there are no rules and anything goes.”

How much better it would be if the lying and the hollering were replaced with knowledge of the facts and common sense.

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