End of Life Counseling (Death Panels) Stays in Reform

Obama works as people go on a tour of the White House gardens

Take that tea baggers!
This is great news because it's such a benefit that was so horribly distorted:

The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.
...

"There is nothing more basic than giving someone the option of speaking with their doctor about how they want to be treated in the case of an emergency," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. "I think the outrageous and vindictive attacks may have backfired to help raise awareness about this problem, which is why it's been kept in the bill." AP

Obama Speaks to Doctors Oct. 5

Obama spoke this morning to a group of doctors from across the country:

President Obama is speaking in the Rose Garden with a group of doctors from all 50 states in the audience. "I want to welcome all the doctors who have joined us today at the White House, but there are a couple that I want to make a special mention of," he begins, naming the physicians on stage who he says are "representing red states, but states, recalcitrant states, high cost states, low cost states, urban and rural states."
Obama draws laughter, telling the doctors: "You look very spiffy in your white coats." Then gets serious.
"At this point, we've heard all the arguments on both sides of the aisle. We've listened to every charge and countercharge," Obama says, mentioning "crazy" claims about death panels and government takeover of health care. Politico

Obama gets them in their oath:

Betsy McCaughey Gets to Blabber All She Wants at Tea Party March

Betsy McCaughey, debunked by Jon Stewart, invented the "death panel" lie, picked up and spread by Sarah Palin. When are these people going to realize that they're NOT America. They are a sliver, a slimy sliver. Just because you're loud and pushy doesn't make your beliefs the right ones or the only ones.
The rest of America is tired of wingnuts. Betsy, who scared one of my relatives out of her socks, says seniors aren't going to be able to get the surgeries they need and is ugly with hate. She says Obama didn't have anything nice to say about doctors and nurses during his speech to Congress.
Which makes me wonder -- who is she protecting? Probably the people she works for. Also, the day after Obama's speech, Obama praised nurses up and down in a speech drown out by dingbat, Joe Wilson:

Tea Partiers sing "Take it Back." The singer says there is an enemy within. He says can't you see we're under attack. Hmmm. Wonder who he's referring to?

See tea party hate signs here.

John McCain on Today Show Sept. 10

Overall, John McCain sounds optimistic on health care. I object to the way Matt Lauer asks the questions, as though McCain is the final arbiter of fact or fiction.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sarah Palin's Media Baiting

Marc Ambinder wrote in the Atlantic yesterday about Sarah Palin's supposed op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He wondered if the media would bite:

But Palin's existence in this debate does not (a) lend her voice any credibility and, beyond that, even if you believe that her experience as a state governor does give her at least a modicum of credibility, it does not follow that, because her voice is credible, it ought to be influential. Newt Gingrich is influential by rights; he's done the work, come up with original ideas, and been in the trenches. (Replacing Medicare with vouchers...not new or remotely plausible, even if GOPers do well in the next two elections. Quoting Ronald Reagan talking about that type of proposal...not new. Etc.)

The media -- by which I mean the cable news networks, primarily, will determine whether Palin's view on health care becomes influential. There are many Republican, conservative health care spokespeople who have earned the right to speak for their party's principals, and, truth be told, can recite the talking points (complete with Ronald Reagan quote) better than Palin and her writer can. They're the ones who should be offended if Palin's op-ed becomes the voice of the opposition tomorrow, because Palin isn't seen by most Americans as a particularly trenchent analyst of policy. Indeed, the reason why Palin's team wants to get her pieces in publications like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal is that, in this next phase of her political career, Mrs. Palin has to burnish her policy skills. And the Journal is all too willing to lend some space to this project, because plenty of people will see the piece.

She also revived her death panels in the piece:

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of "normal political channels," should guide decisions regarding that "huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . ."

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through "normal political channels," they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.

I hadn't heard a peep from the media all day yesterday, when the story was posted, and was hoping it would stay that way. Today, I heard a mention on NPR but I haven't heard much else.

Palin's piece says Look At Me Look At Me. She keeps undeserved focus on herself, saying the same thing over and over again--Obama's socialist government is too big--about different topics. Health care? Government is too big. Economy? Government is too big. It's an old worn out argument. Palin doesn't know enough to write an informed article on health care. Her article is also highly edited because she doesn't write like that. So someone is doing Palin's homework for her. I appreciate the fact that she's learnin' things but I wish she'd do it on her own and spare us. Fingers crossed that the media is over her.

John McCain Confronted on Death Panels

John McCain is never going to call Sarah Palin a whack. That would mean he was a whack.

Obama Okay With Being One-Term President

A reporter asks if Obama is willing to be a one-term president and Gibbs answers yes. It's not the first time Gibbs has said that Obama is willing to be a one-term president.

Obama's Grand Junction Town Hall Video Aug. 15

Obama's opening remarks:

Obama answers a question on public option:

A student asks a very good question: How can a private company compete with the government when it doesn't need to profit:

Obama on "death panels"

Question on medical errors:

Obama's closing remarks:

Read Obama's op-ed in the NYT here.

Read the entire text of the town hall here.

Britain Unites to Defend its Healthcare From American Wingnuts

Wingnuts are offending people across the globe with their lies and distortions about other countries' health care systems. You can't just go around makin' stuff up. Britons--both the left and the right--want to set the record straight on their National Health System. They say their free national health care system is fairer than ours. I believe them. Canadians are rallying to defend their national health care as well.

In Montana today, Obama says he's not looking to model any other nation's system, he wants a "uniquely American" system.
The fringe, though, aren't concerned with facts because they can all see Russia from their house. They are one stubborn lot of people and they're loud and obnoxious and they're not going to slink away or back down. Many of them are just seniors who've been scared out of their wits by ugly emails. But we should all be excited about the prospects of health care reform instead of distracted by the right wing crazy talk. A very thoughtful post from Brown Man:

...the time is now to get your ass back in gear.

Because the people you think you defeated, the people you thought would go home with their tails between their legs because their candidates based their message on fear instead of hope - they have not left the building.

They did not go gently into that good night. Read it.

Even the woman who appears in conservative ads complaining about Britain's national health care says she was misled:

Even British health campaigner Kate Spall — who criticizes NHS failings in U.S. television ads produced by Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a lobby group that opposes Obama's plans — declared that the group had misled her and was distorting her true views.

Spall's mother died of kidney cancer while waiting for treatment, but she said she is still a supporter of the NHS.

"There are failings in the system but I'm not anti-NHS at all," she said, praising Britain's commitment to universal coverage.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old.

The superheated debate broadened this week to include renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a British icon who suffers from motor neurone disease. A U.S. newspaper wrote that under the British system Hawking would be allowed to die — an assertion that Hawking said was absurd.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking said, joining the ranks of those praising Britain's system. NPR