Sebelius: ‘Death Panels’ Talk Is “Horrific”

Someone needs to explain to her that Americans dont like the word Mandatory written in laws. This bill did start that way, I have been reading it from the beginning on the Library of Congress web site. It was “Mandatory Death with Dignity meetings, and manatory Government control to all americans financial acccounts, and a lot more that has to do with less health care as you age, as public out cry is finding out they are changing it, and now saying it was rumor….SORRY now that I have seen myself what they are capable of if not watched close, I dont trust this administration.

I find it funny that right wingers say Obama followers are unable to think, and sometimes say they are brain washed, yet those same people watch Fox news 24/7 and regurgitate everything that Fox news tells them as a fact when in reality Fox twists things, and blatantly lies to people, that is called brain washing. Everyone I know who watches that garbage does NOT have an open mind to anything and don’t know what they are talking about 1/2 the time.
What is so stupid about this entire “death panel” garbage is that everyday all across the country people have end of life discussions with their Dr. The only thing this would do is pay the Dr. to have the discussion, it has nothing to do with the government deciding who lives and who dies.
Oh and BTW I am not for the health care reform in it’s current form, but I am sick of the right wing nut jobs using all these scare tactics all the time, instead of telling the truth.

The people who say having the government in the private health care market would be devastating to the insurance industry are some of the same people who wanted a government option to invest social security in the stock market. Remember?

“Insurance companies are “death panels” of today. They decide, not your doctor, what treatment is suitable for you. They make a decision whether you live or die. Remember the 17 year old girl died because of denied treatment(liver transplant surgery)?”
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Hogwash. I can still borrow money or sell my house and contract with a doctor to obtain any critical care that is disapproved by insurance. Under the proposed socialist aberration I will have no rights and no options. Let them sell you this frightening socialist manifesto and you will become wards of the state to be dealt with as the state sees fit.

Insurance companies are the Death Panels of today.
Why is it that Americans sat quietly through the first Gulf war, 9/11, the second Gulf war and the war in Afghanistan but suddenly, over Washington suggesting we help provide Health Care to ALL Americans, people are outraged and showing up at town halls? This is the thing that makes them mad??
Our armed forces will die to make sure that “no man is left behind” yet here at home we are content to leave sick or dying Americans lying where we find them (as long as we get our Medicare and Social Security).
I can understand fighting to save lives or fighting to save our country; but fighting to make sure that other Americans cannot receive Health Care, even when they need it? I have to admit I am somewhat ashamed of what we have become.
The time has come to do make a stand and to do the right thing. Support Health Care Reform for ALL Americans!

“I find it funny that right wingers say Obama followers are unable to think, and sometimes say they are brain washed, yet those same people watch Fox news 24/7 and regurgitate everything that Fox news tells them as a fact when in reality Fox twists things, and blatantly lies to people, that is called brain washing. Everyone I know who watches that garbage does NOT have an open mind to anything and don’t know what they are talking about 1/2 the time.
What is so stupid about this entire “death panel” garbage is that everyday all across the country people have end of life discussions with their Dr. The only thing this would do is pay the Dr. to have the discussion, it has nothing to do with the government deciding who lives and who dies.
Oh and BTW I am not for the health care reform in it’s current form, but I am sick of the right wing nut jobs using all these scare tactics all the time, instead of telling the truth.”
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As I would expect you lack the ability to justify and defend this “health care” aberration. Instead you attack the evil contents of the electromagnetic spectrum and the people that have apparently succumbed it. This is not about end of life counseling, the substantive issue is why this administration has found it to be such an essential part of their health care proposals. You appear to be speaking with great authority so tell us how “Fox twists things” . . . be specific please.

The term “death panels” is being used to talk about 2 different issues in the bills – one issue is the opportunity to have families be reimbursed for end of life issues counseling with a doctor of their choice (not mandatory, but desired for many who’ve had relatives suffering & needing advice on options to honor the person’s wishes). The other issue being lumped here is the advisory panel – which is just that – not a decision making entity.
Right now – insurance companies do decide who lives & dies – I sell insurance and I know. They determine who gets coverage & who does not. Have type 2 diabetes? No coverage for you . . . the only way to be covered in the states I sell in, is to go to the state operated high risk pools which are very expensive and offer no provisions for preventative care. Take an anti-depressant and possibly have a couple of other common ailments? If you can get coverage, it will be very expensive since anything to do with “mental health” is a risk to an insurance company. I’d say probably every other person I sit with is, or has taken anti-depressants – probably because they have to shop for health insurance . . . .

Oh, I forgot – JeffG – glad you can borrow, have a house to sell & obviously have NEVER been sick with anything major. You’d quickly realize if you had a serious ailment & no insurance that you’d quickly exhaust all of your assets & be destitute enough to then need a different government program – Medicaid. Good luck to you . .

I suppose my tax money will help pay the salary of some bureacrat whose sole function is to advise me of my ‘options’?

It’s your DOCTOR who would advise on end of life issues – he would simply be paid to do it if you decide you want that. insurance companies DECIDE today what options you’ll get . . . .wise up people.

its a shame that the provisions for counselling people on living wills (put in the bill by Republicans in the first place), will be taken out….this is a critical element… to over all care.
Have you ever watched someone die hooked up to machines? it is truly horrific…
So because of a bunch hysterical, irrational lunatics, thousands will not get this help to decide how they want the end of their life to be conducted.
The right-wingers, who claim to be “christian” conservatives, and who perpetuated these lies, will have to answer to a higher power for their immoral behavior on this one. Good luck Mrs Palin when you meet your maker…have a feeling this one will be coming up in that conversation!

Sarah Palin used one simple phrase on two facebook articles and the Democrats can’t retreat fast enough (they caved to Grassley within days). If Governor Palin was wrong in her charaterization then why did the Democrats not stand their ground and fight for what they believe in?
Thank you Sarah Palin for once again being the voice of reason. I would like to see your next articles take on the government option, funding for abortion, funding for illegal aliens, forcing the cowards in Washington to submit to the same plan they pass for the rest of us, and the so called “complete lives system” that seeks to define care based on subjective evaluations of human potential as a determinate for healthcare.

Jeff G – I already corrected my error – it was rplat who made the ocmment about exhausting resources to pay for medical care. But – as far as your comment goes – I have many medicare recipients as clients & they have great care & are very happy with the services they receive. Medicaid provides care for people who are very low income & have no other source of care, although, since the states can do whatever they want there, the programs have become pretty thin & doctors don’t want to accept it anymore since the budgets to pay physicians are constantly being cut & the moneys are being used by the states for things other than health care. Glad your church & doctors have been willing to foot the bill for you. My clients aren’t so lucky & go broke trying to pay for their share of surgery & other large expenses even when they have medical insurance that costs them a ton of money. you must be totally blessed, because your situation is not the norm.

Sebelius is delerious

Jeff G – I’d already corrected the error – it was rplat that made the comment about borrowing money, etc. Although I can tell you that my clients who have medicare get great care & like what they have. Medicaid has been bludgeoned by the states, so it no longer covers the people it is supposed to with quality care. The states have cut the medicaid funding to use the money for things other than healthcare & have created that situation, so now we all pay for the lowest income people who wait until they are very ill to see a doctor. You are not the norm – you must be very blessed to have churches & doctors pay your medical bills. My clients are not so lucky & go broke paying for care. Just having a baby costs $8,000 – $15,000 for a normal trouble free delivery & insurance companies don’t provide maternity coverage outside of employer based groups anymore. I sell insurance in Kansas & MO, and have no companies in KS who will cover it for individuals & families, and only 2 in MO right now. There are some that say they cover it, but they make you await 2 years to get pregnant or have astronomical deductibles that are separate & impossible to meet (try a $10,000 maternity deductible – that means you pay the first $10K). How are young people who are self employed supposed to be able to have families? No one is even talking about that issue . . . .

The former KS gov took horrific amounts of money from the Wichita late- term abortionist Tiller. Sebelius has a long history of profiting from death.

Sarah – plain and simple….Mrs Palin lied…there is no provision for “death panels” in the bill, period
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I made this same statement to a far right Republican at work the other day.
His response was “That wasn’t a lie, it was simply an exageration to gain support for an idea…a boogyman as Obama called it.”
This gets to the heart of what is going on today in this country. The far right’s definition of what a lie is is far different than what a lie really is!

Jenny wrote: “Sarah Palin used one simple phrase on two facebook articles and the Democrats can’t retreat fast enough (they caved to Grassley within days). If Governor Palin was wrong in her charaterization then why did the Democrats not stand their ground and fight for what they believe in? Thank you Sarah Palin for once again being the voice of reason…”
Sarah “Death Panel” Palin wrote in her most recent Facebook entry, “I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee’s decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200).”
Jenny, The Senate Finance Committee is bipartisan, not Democrat. They removed the end-of-life provision, but they removed it from one of THEIR versions of the bill, NOT from HR 3200.
Sarah Palin is your voice of reason so perhaps you can explain the reason for this latest lie.

I am a registered nurse. You are wrong about this end of life counselling being a death panel. Pts. currently have the right to choose if the want CPR, if they want/need a conservator to help/make decisions for them.
You’ve got it all wrong buddy, the insurance companies are the death panels, they deny, deny and then deny care and that’s when you can die. So put your energies into fighting them.

Conservatives in this country are being manipulated by lobbyists. They may not realize it, but they are doing the bidding for big insurance. They’re buying lies, reciting the lines and repeating distortions.

boxcar wrote: “The ambiguous language in the bill that Palin alluded to has now been quickly pulled from the bill. So if it was all nonsense, why was it deleted?”
Palin “alluded” to HR 3200. The language has NOT been pulled from HR 3200; it has been pulled from a Senate version of the bill. Sarah “Death Panel” Palin is lying again.

Sarah “Death Panel” Palin writes on Facebook, “I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee’s decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200).”
And that’s Sarah “Death Panel” Palin’s game plan: Throw out bald-faced lies and believers will run with them, spreading fear and confusion everywhere.

Talking with patients about the likelihood of them dying from their disease and options in their care is part of the job of a physician. Discussing the benefit of treatment as opposed to the side effects has always been and always will be a physicians duty. Discussing Living Wills, Durable Power of Attorney, etc. is not new. If a patient chooses to decline treatment then the offer of hospice is on the table for those who need help in making them comfortable and giving them the best quality of life available, if indeed the life expectancy meets medicare guidelines (another topic altogether). I think paying a physician to have this discussion is counterproductive. The focus should be on the patient’s best interest and not the revenue received for the service.

I though Sarah Palin was a has-been. I thought she was incapable of accomplishing anything. Doesn’t the left talk every day about how irrelevent she is? Now, with the effect of two facebook articles the lefties are claiming she is some svengali like creature that has led an army to kill healthcare. Well, which is it?
The public option has also died today with Conrad and Sebelius herself admitting the plan cannot make it through with those provisions. John Murtha also sounds like he wants to postpone until next year (IE: never vote on the thing in it’s current form).
Sarah Palin raised one salient, evocative point and thankfully it looks like it was enough to kill the base of the current proposal; again, thank you Governor Palin.

As a proud “right wing nut bag”, “mobster” and whatever else the left wants to call me, too bad you guys are losing this debate and you don’t even have a clue why. Could it be you share the same combination of traits that Obama has….arrogance and ignorance? “Trust me” from a politician on either side just doesn’t get it anymore.

It is evident that (G)od’s (O)wn (P)arty will do ANYTHING as poor losers. God help us if their kind ever again gain power in America. First we have to suffer one disgusting love affair after another where family values are ground into the mud by a bunch of horribly self-righteous hypocrites. Now we have to listed to their antics which we all know are only a ploy to destroy our country for the sake of their egos and loss of power.

I find it difficult to believe that so many Americans are buying the BS being spewed by opponents to healthcare reform. nanameow>>>>> So you think government care will be great right? You are moving now since it will go down in flames. Canada has lots of room.

some people should listen more and not be ready to respond as soon as a person stops talking, process what was just said and then respond. second get the facts, most of us who read know that washington today is run by money, Old money with old ideas.
breakdown
The rich want their money and yours (some not all.)
most people who still have a job today is also collecting food stamps, that’s middle class today.
I believe that you should have the right to earn as much money as you like I am ok with that but on top of that you receive loop holes and cash advances and who picks up the tab the middle class. it is time for the rich to put into something that is worth saving us.
signed {the bailout crew} aka middle class

All the people spouting the ‘death panel” stuff, please shut up – in general, not just on this board. This is such a minor part of current healthcare issues or healthcare issues tomorrow under any scenario. I’m not worried about end of life counseling right now, what I want to understand is how a healthcare overhaul is going to be paid for and whether it would cause my employer to consider ending my private insurance because I could get a public option. All of this death panel talk is just diverting attention from what real people want to know.

I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you’re willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?
Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I’m not a racist. This isn’t to be confused with legal immigration. Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining un-funded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
Four, Cap and Trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.
Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don’t you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don’t you start there?
Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don’t trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ?? what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we’ll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band?Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let’s have it. Let’s say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ?? please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.
Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let’s just slow down and get some input from some non-politicians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed-reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I’m busy. I’m busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
Thirteen, Support businesses. At one time America made the best items, tools, cars, steel. But because of various factors we are becoming a service economy and most manufacturing has been sent overseas because of the EPA, IRS, and other government agencies. We need to re-build our manufacturing base and get the government out of the way.
I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of our children and us? We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.
From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don’t want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we’re morons.
We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we’re so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work, pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn’t ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don’t care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

indithinker, you are sooo right! Sarah Palin and her crew are lying. And lying big time! They probably have stock in the private insurance industry and fear their stocks will drop dramatically so they use fear to sway timid minds unwilling to think for themselves.
In fact, several years ago, weren’t private insurance companies requiring hospitals and doctors to do just that? Talk to patients about their end of life wishes? Advise them on living wills and power of attorney in the event they were unable to speak for themselves?

A liberal with no facts on his (or her) side, falls back on his (or her) old friend INTIMIDATION. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

Sarah Palin is the biggest joke since…..Bork,,.I am sorry I am a republican who will take President Obama over Sarah palin any day….SARAH NO!!!!NO!!!!

I thought that the HMO’s were the death squads? Funny how people are on these boards are claiming that ABC and other networks are communists wanting to control the country and sterilize Americans or something (?) but they have no problem with FOX and its psycho commentators who seem to be living in an alternate universe. And Sarah Palin, who would have been a two minute flash in the pan ten years ago is suddenly an expert? Never thought I would see this happen in my country.

Sarah Palin with just a Facebook page is doing the media’s job for them. Asking the hard questions is what ABC should be doing. Instead they agree with Pres. Obama. Sarah is giving voice to the elderly and disabled.

What she says is not true. She is a very strange person. She seems to be in a realm of her own design and its not the world I’m living in. Maybe she likes to hear herself talk or maybe she likes to read and hear about herself.

) Proof that EUTHANASIA is pushed by Obama’s socialist government “health” care.
President Obama had been confronted by a North Carolina woman asking if “everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die.”
In response Obama joked morbidly about euthanasia, that he hadn’t yet hired enough bureaucrats to conduct such an operation, yet he could not deny the New York Post’s discovery the House bill “compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care” (pages 425-430). In other words, your grandmother will be told, when insufficient resources are rationed to young people, that her duty to die begins with mandatory “end-of-life counseling,” or as Obama explained, “encourage the use of living wills” that terminate otherwise salvageable lives prematurely through signed “do not resuscitate” (DNR) legal releases that authorize “pulling the plug” on Grandma

Meg, you should be ashamed for spreading so many horrible lies.
Betsy McCaughey was the person who claimed “One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care.”
That statement is absolutely untrue! The consultations are voluntary. There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING in that bill saying consultations are mandatory. Anyone can read the provision for themselves in section 1233.
And the phony Obama quote about about Grandma is simply ludicrous. Here’s what REALLY happened with the North Carolina woman, per the NY Times:
Obama said the only such provision he’s aware of is one that would allow seniors to get voluntary counseling every five years — more often during illnesses — to discuss their options about dying and being kept alive by artificial means.
“I think that the only thing that may have been proposed in some of the bills — and I actually think this is a good thing — is that it makes it easier for people to fill out a living will,” Obama said.
“But, Mary, I just want to be clear: Nobody is going to be knocking on your door; nobody is going to be telling you you’ve got to fill one out,” he added.
“And certainly, nobody is going to be forcing you to make a set of decisions on end-of-life care based on some bureaucratic law in Washington.”
Obama revealed that both he and First Lady Michelle Obama have living wills, which allow very sick or terminally ill people to specify how they’ll be cared for before becoming incapacitated.
“I’d encourage everybody to get one,” Obama said. “I have one. Michelle has one.”

Just an observation based on many years of living and watching the Gov’t work. If the BILL does not specifically state that there can be no DEATH PANEL or anything like one, that cost can not be taken into account when deciding if a procedure should be done. Then it will happen becasue there is nothing saying that the Gov’t can’t.

The only difference between you and me is that you are lucky enough that your job was not moved to China.
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Posted by: d70 | Aug 16, 2009 10:50:19 AM
my health care system works fine and has been working fine since finding a good job over 30 years ago after working at learning in school and not playing hooky and using drugs. my health care systems doesn’t need reforming. what needs reforming are those lazy, drug addict deadbeats who think I’m paying for their trip trough life. Swim or sink baby cause all I have for your kind is an anchor not a lifesaver….

I have worked since 1974 helping people find work and since 1986 mostly with welfare eligible people. Which means I have worked with a wide variety of employers for years!
What people don’t realize is that this health plan is for the WORKING MIDDLE CLASS IN PRIVATE INDUSTRY!!!! Low income poeple get Medicaid, senior citizens get Medicare, Government at all levels, school and military workers/people get good health care.
Fewer and fewer employers offer health care anymore and those who do often charge so much their lower paid workers can’t afford it. Employers can’t afford health care and stay competitive globally and the small businesses that politicians are always touting are even less able to afford health insurance for their employees.
I know a person who needed an operation or die & was told by our local hospital when she couldn’t pay for it – no health insurance – go to HOSPICE! Fortunately she knew people who came through for her but not everyone does. A person dear to me with health insurance through the company he works for has been told his 2 hernias are elective surgery & won’t pay until they strangulate and his life is threatened! I could go on & on.
All of these people against public health insurance who consider themselves Christians need to reread Jesus’s words and ask GOD’S forgiveness. WHY SHOULD MIDDLE CLASS WORKING AMERICANS DIE BECAUSE AMERICANS CARE MORE ABOUT MONEY THAN THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS????

Sebelius a person so dedicated to abortion rights, including partial birth abortion, is going to tell me that “Death Panel” talk is “Horrific”. She is the last person on Earth that I would trust to be honest about such a matter.

Its in the houses bill..They say theyre taking it out…but its there all the same. nothing else to call it but DEATH PANELS.
just dumped AARP for the American Senior Association….for that and many other reasons AARP’s officers broke our trust. The Joker will have his day…I’m waiting for triple six to come up in all this

“Thank you Sarah Palin for being the voice of reason”
Take a deep breath folks, if Palin is the voice of reason we all need to drink from the well.

I guess they shouldn’t have written the death panels into the bill, then they wouldn’t have to back-pedal!

The sad thing about this whole article is that these death panels already exist in the private insurance sector, denying treatment on a systematic basis.

Here we are today. Good or bad. What is really horrific is that there are those who have ‘given’ Congress a 1000 page legislative bill for tweaking and told by the President of the United States to pass it in two weeks. Anyone, I mean anyone, has to be insane or an enemy of the US to make such a demand. Along with all the anti-Amercians pushing this through – before we can review and modify it to what America needs.

Why was such a controversial provision put into H.R. 3200, are the writers of this bill that dense? I realize in the bill that end of life counseling is strictly voluntary, and that the provision was put there to make sure doctors would get paid for this, but why put it in there at all – they shot themselves in the foot on that one.

WE ALREADY KNOW THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND ITS PRINCE KILLS PRE-BORN BABIES!
So why should seniors consider themselves exempt? Don’t sign up for end of life counseling, or you might just find out what they really meant by end of life.
Read the words, don’t let Sebelius or anyone else tell you what the words really mean. What does the plan say in plain English, if they can interpret it as something different, what might they do later?
Remember, they called abortion a right to privacy, now it’s in your face and a campaign plank. And if you voted dem you have blood on your hands.

J.Smith sez-”I dont trust this administration”??? Say what???? And you idiots trusted Cheney??? Call me a little skeptical, but I smell racism! DUH! The BS that you think is deceit is pure Sarah Palin.

Horrific – yes, believable – yes…it’s just a matter of semantics…rationed care, two few doctors, using the value vs life expectancy equation, Obama’s relationship and association with those who support single payer, universal healthcare, socialized medicine…call it what you like, in the end, the elderly get the shaft, but then again so do babies in the womb, children born with disabilities, and those adults who are deemed valuable by our society.

Jenny, who cares who put in the death panel provision? It’s wrong. Don’t you get it, it isn’t about Dem or GOP posturing, its about a BILL that the majority of Americans DO NOT WANT and an administration that won’t listen to the people who elected them into office.

She is a typical word game player. Look up fullabull, or is it spelled fullible.

Wow. That’s all I can say. Wow. I just pray that you people spewing the wacked out, genocidal conspiracy theories are pulling our collective leg.

rationed, limited or refused care by a government board or panel is functionally equivalent to “death panel.”
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True, but it’s not in the bill so I’m not sure what they point is. Keep drinking the kool aid.

Please inform Sebelius that death panels is just a reference to the end result when government commissioners make decisions in health care. I think it is very important to know whether Sebelius will be forced to participate in the health care plan, like the people. This will clarify whether she understands what is in the plan or if she just wants to counter what concerns the people, as being false.

I am a very healthy 66 year old father of eight, and I am concerned about a health care “reform” program that includes provisions for preferential care based on age. In particular I am very alarmed about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s position as an official administration advisor. He is Rahm Emanuel’s brother, who has stated that “doctors take the Hippocratic oath too seriously”, and who openly advocates denying procedures to seniors in preference to younger people.
Just how would this work? Suppose I should need a hip replacement at some time in the near future. I could well live into my nineties or longer. A couple of years ago I had a routine physical exam along with my youngest child, a normal 16 year old boy. The doctor said that my blood pressure and cholesterol readings were better than his! I’ve never polluted my body with tobacco, alcohol, recreational or pharmaceutical drugs, and people who guess my age invariably say that I look like I’m in my early 50′s. So let’s say that some 40 year old who was a super obese drug user, with all kinds of medical problems, needed a hip replacement. And further suppose that he had preferential minority status. The Obamacare bureaucracy decides that he gets the hip replacement, after which he dies of a heart attack a couple of years later. Meanwhile, I have to live out my remaining 25 or 30 years as a cripple in a wheelchair, as a result of that bureaucracy’s decision to deny me the procedure because I was considered “too old” to get any significant benefit from it. – and the system would probably spend more on a quarter of a century’s worth of wheelchairs, than the original operation would have cost! Furthermore, if I’ve chosen to live a healthy lifestyle, thereby SPARING the system having to put out money on ME while I was young, then I damn well deserve to receive the care I might need in my old age, in preference to someone younger person who has CHOSEN to make a physical wreck out of himself!
While the denial of care in such a case might not result in me dying earlier than I otherwise would, it is easy to imagine other kinds of denials that would result in earlier than necessary deaths, especially if seniors are going to be required to be subjected to a euthanasia pep talk every five years from the likes of a Dr. Kervorkian. And while this whole program may have the side benefit, for Democrat politicians, of thinning out the ranks of elderly conservative voters, I would caution any lawmaker supporting this legislation to consider the liability for potential future genocide prosecutions, along the lines of the post WWII Nuremburg trials.
In terms of the number of years of life destroyed, assuming we accept the figure of 6 million Jews whose lives were terminated early by Nazicare, and assuming the average number of such destroyed years per person was on the order of 25, we get a grand total of 150 million years of life destroyed in the Holocaust. Now let us further assume that the average amount of life destroyed by Obamacare’s denial of treatment for seniors, will be around 5 years per person. In order to equal the amount of life destroyed in the Holocaust, it would only be necessary for 30 million senior citizens to die under Obamacare. The Census Bureau estimates that 2.5 million die of old age every year in the United States, so every 12 years there would be a senior genocide equivalent in magnitude to the Holocaust. I certainly would not want to be one of those politicians identified as a proponent of this kind of “re-forming” of America’s health care system.

“Sarah Palin was refering to the great fear that elder people have that health care will be rationed. Not the fact that counciling will be available.”
Sarah Palin was inferring that there are death panels in HR 3200. She started off her death panel message by stating “As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping …”.
“The DEms swore there was no such part of the plan that refered to deciding whether an older person was deemed worthy of additional health care. By the way its odd that after swearing there was no such provision in the plan on Monday they came out on Wednesday and said they had removed it.Another neat Democrat trick.”
Sorry to cloud your mind with facts, Ken. The Dems did not say they removed anything. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley announced that the Senate Finance Committee will be removing an end-of-life provision from THEIR version of the bill. And the committee is bipartisan. It was Sarah Palin who made the claim on Facebook that the Senate was removing section 1233 from HR 3200. That is utterly false.

when will people realize we do not have a health care problem but a cost problem? we have the best health care system in the world and everyone can receive health care–all are worried about the cost. the whole system should not be abandoned when we can solve the reasons for such sky rocketing prices–govt etc causing such

George,
The insurance industry makes a case for premiums based on probabilities which are dependent upon the groups of people that they “lump” together. These “groups” are manipulated, as well as their costs, and then presented to the individual state insurance boards and sold to the regulators (who are not equally matched as regards resources), and then additionally voted on by state legislators who are heavily “lobbied” by
the insurance industry. Until “this” system is really analyzed, the public will be subject to numbers abuse. The analysis for healthcare reform needs to be done category by category (ins., uninsureds,medicare,etc.) and then an individual case done for each to formulate a notional poicy debate rather than doing it generally. There needs to be a rational framework presented before a consensus is reached.

It is interesting to note that this whole “death panel” spin was devised and is being perpetuated by republicans.
In my experience, most folks who make
claims like this about the intentions of others very often are the first ones to go on and do that very same thing.
Why, then, did the republican party come up with this?
Could it be, perhaps, that THEY are the ones with the “death panel” plans?
Time for this rediculous B.S. to end and for the republicans to do something tto HELP out country, rather than tearing it down in order to further their own selfish interests, I would say.

If it’s so horrific why was it in the house version of healthcare? Will it be in the next version? Does the healthcare plan contain a proviso that the bureaucrats can change it in the future almost at will, as does the “cap and tax” disaster?

Notice how casual the USPSTF was about its suggestion regarding mammograms. Now consider the same casual suggestions regarding your mom or your granny’s end-of-life healthare. Suggestions made by panels (CER Panels) quietly funded in the dark by the stimulus package. Why were they funded in the dark? What was the Axis of Taxes (OBAMA-PELOSI-REID) trying to accomplish?