Death Panels and Partisan Politics

Commentary By Ron Beasley

It has become obvious that the Republicans will attack and try to obstruct anything - anything the Democrats and the Obama administration try to do even if it was something they might have agreed with a few days before,  In yesterday's New York Times Oregon's Representative Earl Blumenauer gives us an example.

My Near Death Panel Experience

I DIDN�T mean to kill Grandma. I didn�t even mean to create death panels.

But
now that I and my fellow lawmakers in the House have passed a health
care bill, I�m finally free to explain what I learned as the author of
the now-famous end-of-life provisions. My experiences during the
bizarre controversies of the summer should provide a note of caution
about what potential troubles and political distortions might lie ahead
as health care legislation moves forward in the Senate, through the
reconciliation process and toward a final bill.

He goes on to explain that he thought it was wrong that medicare would not pay for end of life counseling:

So when I was working on the health care bill, I included language
directing Medicare to cover a voluntary discussion with a doctor once
every five years about living wills, power of attorney and end-of-life
treatment preferences.

The language received support from both the health care community and there were no objections at the time from Democrats or Republicans but then all hell broke loss.

Then Betsy McCaughey entered the fray. A former lieutenant governor
of New York, Ms. McCaughey had gained notoriety in the 1990s by
attacking the Clinton health plan. In a radio interview, she attacked
the end-of-life provisions in the health care legislation, claiming it
�would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years
people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell
them how to end their life sooner.� The St. Petersburg Times�s
fact-checking Web site PolitiFact quickly excoriated her: �McCaughey isn�t just wrong; she�s spreading a ridiculous falsehood.�

But
in today�s vicious news cycle, lies take on lives of their own on Web
sites, blogs and e-mail chains and go viral in seconds. Ms. McCaughey�s
claims were soon widely circulated in the thirst for ammunition against
the Democrats� health care reform plan. �Mandatory counseling for all
seniors at a minimum of every five years, more often if the seasoned
citizen is sick or in a nursing home,� was how Rush Limbaugh described
the provision a week later. �We can�t have counseling for mothers who
are thinking of terminating their pregnancy, but we can go in there and
counsel people about to die,� he added.

Two days later, the lie
found its way into Republican politicians� statements. �This provision
may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged
euthanasia if enacted into law,� declared the House Republican leader,
John Boehner of Ohio, and Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan. I was shocked.
This really struck at the heart of what I was trying to do � to build
consensus.

And as we all know it was down hill from there.

Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina made the singularly
outrageous claim that the Republican version of health care reform �is
pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to
death by their government.� More groups and politicians repeated and
exaggerated the claims.

The most bizarre moment came on Aug. 7 when Sarah Palin used the term
�death panels� on her Facebook page. She wrote: �The America I know and
love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will
have to stand in front of Obama�s �death panel� so his bureaucrats can
decide, based on a subjective judgment of their �level of productivity
in society,� whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is
downright evil.�

At this point most if not all of the Republicans jumped on the "death panel" meme and the media continued to feed it.  Blumenauer correctly points out that the corporate media, and not just FOX, is responsible for feeding the death panel frenzy.

This is just one example of how partisan politics now trumps governing and truth.  This is most obvious in the Senate where it effectively takes a super majority of 60 to pass anything.  The US has become as ungovernable as the State of California as a result.  Make no mistake this is exactly what the CATO, Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand conservatives want.  In the past the filibuster was an important safety valve to blunt rule by the majority - not necessarily a bad thing.  But as Ezra Klein pointed out last week the rules have changed.

Why don't the Democrats just break out the cots and let the Republicans filibuster?

There's a reason the Senate stopped doing this. Democrats are not
going to want to sit around all day and be in the chamber listening to
Republicans talk. They don't want to give up fundraisers. They don't
want to give up trips. They'd have to give Republicans as much time as
they wanted.

The Democrats can change the rules with a simple majority vote.  There is nothing in the constitution about the filibuster and it has been changed in the past. If the US is to be governable it is time to change or eliminate it once again.