Or perhaps I should say "completely circular." This alert from Publius at Obsidian Wings struck me. From The Hill:
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia.
"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."
[. . .]
The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to "advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care."
Can I call "bullshit" on Grassley? (Who himself has been one of the major obstacles to getting a bill out of that committee.) That last statement is pure crap.
And has anyone noticed how this Republican mantra -- the Sarah Palin "death panels" -- has influenced the "bipartisan" members of the Finance Committee (the Gang of Six -- three Republicans and three Republicans-lite) to drop this "controversial" provision.
As Publius points out, it's really a disaster for policy-making in this country:
A demonstrable falsehood was repeated and repeated, and it led the Committee to drop a very valuable provision that would help inform individuals -- particularly those with less resources -- about critical medical and legal issues. The falsity and fearmongering drove the policy here.
At the risk of repeating myself, from the Republican viewpoint it's not about healthcare reform. It's about torpedoing the Obama administration by any means necessary.
Y'know, I remember noting at one point that the Republicans were very good at winning elections and complete failures at governing. It appears that the Democrats are going them one better: they can win elections as long as they're not really Democrats, and they're even worse at governing.
Who said the Democrats were in control?
Update:
Let's see how the Gang of Six responds to this -- and how long it takes them.
Update II:
John Cole is just as fed up as I am.
2 comments:
Of course it's worth noting that the end-of-life consultation provisions the Republicans are so keen to scuttle have been part of federal Medicare for over twenty years and were originally written (and have been repeatedly supported) by Republicans in both houses; it's only now, when they think they can damage Obama, that the Republicans suddenly have a problem with any of this.
I am hopeful that this is the end result of the divide and rule strategy they have followed for the past decade and a half, but only because that means the Republican party is going to have to rebuild itself as a legitimate part of the process in this country. Right now, it really does look as though all they have are the Palinite fringe, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly. (Oh, and Michelle Malkin, the right-wing's favorite racist.)
One thing that disturbs me is that the brownshirt tactics with the Town Hall meetings seem to be paying off for them among independents, which is astonishing. But then, wait until one of their pistol-packin' mamas actually shoots someone -- and watch the stampede among the aforementioned luminaries away from the whole thing.
And the Democrats, of course, are completely clueless.
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