Dems Claim Victory in "Death Panel" Debate
Politico reports:
The debate over “death panels” is hard to kill — but at least one Senate Democratic aide says the issue has now become “Kryptonite for the Right, ” thanks to the way a new Medicare regulation is written.
The new policy, buried in the 692-page Medicare fee schedule, allows payment to doctors who provide end-of-life counseling to patients on a voluntary basis. “Voluntary” is the key word, say supporters of the policy.
“When people recognize that they will now have coverage for VOLUNTARY advance-care-planning, they may actually question the motives of those who told them health care reform would involve ‘death panels’,” the Senate Democratic aide said in an e-mail to POLITICO.
The regulation was published earlier this month in the Federal Register and was the subject of a Dec. 25 front-page story in The New York Times.
But Republicans may not let this one go. Betsy McCaughey, a Republican health policy expert and the former lieutenant governor of New York, coined the phrase “death panel” — which was famously tweeted by Sarah Palin during the reform debate.
“Doctors should always be paid for the time they spend counseling patients, including about the tough choices they are making toward the end of their lives. But the government shouldn’t be scripting what doctors should say to patients. The government isn’t a trusted educator, it has a stake in reducing the care provided to elderly patients,” McCaughey, an ardent critic of the health reform law, told POLITICO.
McCaughey, who founded and chairs the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, said that the new rule signals that the Obama administration may take the new policy a step further.
“When end-of-life counseling first came up, doctors’ quality ratings were going to be determined in part by the percentage of patients who have a living will and those who follow it up,” she said. “If they make advance-care planning a protocol … it’s not voluntary, despite the use of the word.“
