Senators dump end-of-life provision from bill

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — Key senators are excluding a provision on end-of-life care from U.S. health care overhaul legislation after language in a House bill caused a furor.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the provision had been dropped from consideration because it could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly.

Meanwhile, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin refused to retreat Thursday from her argument that the language in the House bill would create “death panels,” even though a provision of the bill she cites merely authorizes government reimbursements to doctors for voluntary end-of-life consultations.

In the posting titled, “Concerning Death Panels,” Palin wrote: “With all due respect, it’s misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients,” and added, “It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing.”

A health care bill passed by three House committees allows a health program for the elderly to reimburse doctors for voluntary counseling sessions about end-of-life decisions. The provision in the bill would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill, and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.

The sessions would be covered every five years, more frequently if someone is gravely ill.

The American Medical Association and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization support the provision.

The Senate Finance Committee is still working to complete a bill.

Palin’s posting comes one day after Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that Palin and other critics were not helping the GOP by tossing out false claims. Portions of the Democratic health care bills “are bad enough that we don’t need to be making things up,” Murkowski said, invoking a phrase that Palin used in her resignation speech, when she asked the news media to “quit making things up.”

Murkowski said she was offended at the death panel terminology. “There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill,” she said.

Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who co-sponsored a similar measure in the Senate, said it was “nuts” to claim the bill encourages euthanasia.

And Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who authored the provision on end-of-life counseling, said he is astounded that Palin has not tempered her bleak descriptions of the health care bill.

“It’s deliberate at this point,” Blumenauer said. “If she wasn’t deliberately lying at the beginning, she is deliberately allowing a terrible falsehood to be spread with her name.”

He said the measure would block funds for counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option, calling references to death panels or euthanasia “mind-numbing.”

Blumenauer singled out another prominent Republican, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, saying he has “linked arms with Sarah Palin and death panels.” While Gingrich has not used the term death panel, he has declined several opportunities to denounce Palin’s claim.

“You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards,” Gingrich said Sunday on the ABC’s “This Week.”

Blumenauer called the comments despicable and part of an orchestrated effort by Republicans to discredit the health care overhaul and scare seniors.

In nearly four decades of public life, “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,” said Blumenauer, 60.

Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Gingrich, said Blumenauer was following a Democratic tactic of linking all Republicans to Palin.

“Obviously Newt didn’t embrace her euphemism of death panels. But he said to the larger point, there is a concern that people have about allowing government to be involved in these decisions,” Tyler said. “She’s raising a point we should discuss.”

Blumenauer said the measure he supports would merely allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. Topics include living wills, designating a close relative or a trusted friend as a health care proxy and information about pain medications for chronic discomfort.