Obama death panels, advance health care directives and end of life planning

Death is too important a subject to be left to the mercy of rampaging, reality-defying numbskulls
What was old is new again: Since the "Death Panels" lies are back, it seems only appropriate to bring back this offering by the great R. J. Matson from last year's Holiday Season. by Ken I know we're supposed to make nice to those poor misunderstood Teabaggers, and bow before the legitimacy of their grievances. It's just kind of hard when, besotted by their newfound power, they're off on a screaming rampage, wildly wielding their weapons of psychotic destruction against every vestige of realit...

Obama administration will enact end-of-life planning for Medicare
In a nod to sanity, the Obama Administration will pay doctors for end-of-life planning advice provided to Medicare patients, a provision dropped from the Affordable Care Act after the "Death Panel" lies were allowed to rule the day. Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make Health Care decisions for themselves. While the new law does ...

This Week's Health Industry News
With the Congress in adjournment and many business people taking off the time between holidays, we do not expect any substantive health industry news this week. But we could be surprised. Take, for instance, the news reported Sunday by our colleague Robert Pear in Washington. The Obama Administration, through an administrative rule, is resurrecting the notion of end-of-life planning services for older Americans — the same sort of planning that was falsely characterized as “Death Panels”

White House Tries To Quiet Revived Talk Of Death Panels
The Hill: The Obama Administration is trying to quiet talk about so-called “Death Panels” after The New York Times reported Sunday that a new Medicare Regulation includes incentives for end-of-life-care planning. The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new Healthcare Reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disab...

White House Pushing Back Against Revived Chatter About End-Of-Life Planning
The White House is denying that a new Medicare Regulation revives language dropped from the Health Care Reform Bill that covered voluntary end-of-life planning sessions between doctors and patients. The policy was removed from the Health Care bill after Republicans and right-wing opponents of the bill construed the provision as creating "Death Panels" for old people. The New York Times reported yesterday that beginning January 1st: Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the...

Obama Creates Death Panels Rejected By Congress
The Obama Administration has secretly crafted a new policy to implement the contentious Death Panels that Congress dropped under immense public pressure from Legislation to take over the nation’s Healthcare System. Under Regulations that will take effect in January, the administration will offer medical professionals monetary incentives to accelerate “end of life care,” which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment. Kept quiet by the administration and

President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation
Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama's Death Panels are back, this time via the president's fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I've decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over. You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in ObamaCare. You might also remember the political firestorm these death...

President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation
Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama’s Death Panels are back, this time via the president’s fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I’ve decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over. You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in ObamaCare. You might also remember the political fir...

Medicare will cover advance care planningGood for Democrats and for Republicans, too
Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make Health Care decisions for themselves. While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama Administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the Regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals wit...

Death Panels Regulation Begins Obamas Rule by Fiat
Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com In a foretaste of outrages to come, the Obama Administration managed to sneak out a federal Regulation paying doctors to provide “end of life counseling” to those covered by ObamaCare. The Medicare rule, which Congress never voted on, may encourage thousands to forego lifesaving treatment. This move is a voluntary precursor to the inevitable Rationing engendered by Socialized Medicine. Many conservative media outlets have objected to the pro-death aspe...

Republicans Turn To Insurance Company Lobbyists To Turn Back Health Care Reform
John Boehner and company are looking to their old K Street friends to overturn Health Care Legislation. Three recently hired Republican aides — two set to work in senior positions on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, and one for soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner — spent the past years lobbying on behalf of Insurance Companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and other corporate interest groups with a vested interest in weakening or repealing the law. Two weeks ago, incoming Ene...

Howard Kurtz Doesn't Seem to Understand Why Liberals Might be Disappointed in President Obama
I don't know if it's just me, but Howard Kurtz seemed to be a bit puzzled during this panel segment on Reliable Sources as to why liberals like Thomas Frank might be disappointed with President Obama and the Legislation he's managed to get passed during his first two years in office. I think Frank summed it up pretty nicely during the little time he was allowed to speak during this segment. FRANK: That's true and look what he just did the other day. I mean, it's a great accomplishment. He did ge...

No More Mister Nice Blog
WELL ABOUT THIS TIME, BOSS HOGG REALIZED HE WAS IN A HEAP OF TROUBLE Josh Marshall weighs Mississippi GOP Gov. Haley Barbour's Presidential chances in 2012, and wants to know why anyone inside DC thinks anyone outside DC is even remotely considering the guy for anything other than Fastest 2012 Campaign To Crash And Burn. In the wake of Haley Barbour's Jim Crow face plant last week various commentators are weighing in to take stock of whether it's a bump in the road or the end of his hopes of r...

Ms. Alaska
Add this piece to the ravenous media fawn that it is itself decrying, that would be the obsessive and at times goofy media attention the former Governor from Alaska has racked up in the last two years—especially in the months since Sarah Palin, in fact, early-departed the very gubernatorial position that led to her assault on our collective psyche. Other than the daily Palin onslaught what, you might ask, is prompting such a bah-humbug lament, especially at a time of the year when we sho...

If Sarah Palin Tells You Anything
Check it. Then check it again. Taegan Goddard links to a New York Daily News item catching another of these — shall we call them self-flattering improvements of the record by the former Governor? On last night’s episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, the former Alaska governor tried to explain how it was a simple typo created the new word, “refudiate.” She says it was just a mistyped tweet on her BlackBerry. However, the New York Daily News points out that Palin’...

Obamacare and Soft Tyranny [Reader Post]
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its Victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. To great derision, Sarah Palin was critical of ObamaCare in August of 2009 in Face...

President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation
Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama’s Death Panels are back, this time via the president’s fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I’ve decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over. You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in ObamaCare. You might also remember the political fi...

Romney's Team Refines Its Health Care Pitch, Defense
A Virginia judge's ruling earlier this month that a key provision of President Barack Obama's Health Care law is Unconstitutional was hailed as a major breakthrough for all segments of the Republican Party save, perhaps, one. Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.), whose own successful dalliance with Health Care reform in Massachusetts is cited as an intellectual model for ObamaCare, stands to gain little from this specific policy topic being at the center of political discourse. At least that's ho...

Quote of the Day
‎”Sarah Palin, part-time Governor of Alaska, is angry because Michele Obama is encouraging kids to eat healthy. Sarah Palin believes the government shouldn’t tell us what to do. Sarah Palin believes she should tell us what to do.” -David Letterman ...

Caroline Baums New Years Resolution
Caroline Baum — Bloomberg’s snarky, sardonic columnist — imagines New Year’s resolutions for various Wall Street players: • President Obama promises his base he will attend a weekly meeting of Tax Cutters Anonymous. • Securities and Exchange Commission pledges to find someone, somewhere who is responsible for some kind of wrongdoing; • Ben Bernanke promises to cut up his U.S.A. Credit Card; • New York Fed president Bill Dudley resolves to explain how it is t

Sarah Palin Explains Origin Of 'Refudiate'
Amid the familial banter that took place on Sunday's episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the former Alaska Governor went beyond criticism of conservationists to explain the much ridiculed genesis of her faux-word, "refudiate." Politico reports on the exchange, which briefly touched on a tweet from July -- since deleted -- concerning plans to build an Islamic Cultural Center near the site of Ground Zero: "I pressed an F instead of a P and people freaked out," said Sarah, pointing out that her bl...

Palin Misremembers Inventing a New Word
On last night's episode of Sarah Palin's Alaska, the former Alaska Governor tried to explain how it was a simple typo created the new word, "refudiate." She says it was just mistyped a tweet on her BlackBerry. However, the New York Daily News points out that Palin's memory "is not entirely accurate. Prior to her Twitter message, she misspoke the word on Sean Hannity's Fox News show while discussing the NAACP's stance on Tea Party Racism." Here's the video: ...

Sneaking It In
Human Events: Bureaucrats Secretly Implement ObamaCare by Tony Lee 12/27/2010 When ObamaCare passed in the partisan manner in which it did, the liberal establishment and its ever growing army of pipsqueak transcribers in the mainstream media said ObamaCare’s passage would be a boon for Democrats and mocked those like Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli who spoke out against ObamaCare and called the measure Unconstitutional, particularly the Individual Mandate requirement that would com...

How Obamacare keeps families trapped in poverty
In order to help pay for the $20 billion "Doc Fix" in Medicare payment rates, the government now has an “exchange recapture subsidy,” which basically allows the government to compel low-income families to return any excess Subsidies they might have gotten from ObamaCare. Shikha Dalmia has a must read piece at The Daily Beast on the kind of perverse incentives this creates: When the government hands out subsidies, it will use a household’s income in the previous year as the basi...

Billie Jean King: President Obama Has Impressed Me
There is a saying in sports that you should never underestimate your opponent. And it might apply in politics as well. While President Obama has taken his share of knocks this year and things did not look particularly good for him after the mid-term Elections, he has risen to the occasion. As the year comes to a close there is progress being made and many important pieces of Legislation getting passed. Champions adjust. And he has definitely done that. The Obama Administration and Congress ar...