All we need to know is that they wanted the provision to be included and went to great lengths to cover it up. We should be thankful the proposal was removed but the decision to do so is not to be applauded. The removal of the provision was–bare naked politics. If no one had noticed, it would still be in place.

(NY Times) While administration officials cited procedural reasons for changing the rule, it was clear that political concerns were also a factor. The renewed debate over advance care planning threatened to become a distraction to administration officials who were gearing up to defend the health law against attack by the new Republican majority in the House.Although the health care bill signed into law in March did not mention end-of-life planning, the topic was included in a huge Medicare regulation setting payment rates for thousands of physician services. The final regulation was published in the Federal Register in late November. The proposed rule, published for public comment in July, did not include advance care planning.

An administration official, authorized by the White House to explain the mix-up, said Tuesday, “We realize that this should have been included in the proposed rule, so more people could have commented on it specifically.”

Meaning, they tried to pull a fast one and were caught red handed. This was not a slip up people, they intentionally left out what would be seen as a highly controversial provision out of sight during the “public comment” stage.

The November regulation was issued by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a longtime advocate for better end-of-life care. White House officials who work on health care apparently did not focus on the part of the rule that dealt with advance care planning.

Let’s review Berwick’s “longtime advocacy for better end-of-life care”, shall we…

“The Obama recess appointment of rationing advocate Donald Berwick to head the key government agency that will apply the new health care law is disastrous news for the vulnerable, especially the elderly and the sickest of American patients,” said Burke Balch, J.D., director of National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics.

Confirmation of Berwick would have faced strong opposition from pro-life Republican senators appalled by his open advocacy of government-imposed rationing of medical treatment. In a June 2009 interview with the journal Biotechnology Healthcare, Berwick said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

In an article in the May/June 2008 issue of Health Affairs, he called for “rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest” so as to “reduce per capita costs.” Lamenting that “[t]oday’s individual health care processes are designed to respond to the acute needs of individual patients,” Berwick wrote that instead government should “approach new technologies and capital investments with skepticism and require that a strong burden of proof of value lie with the proponent.”

Berwick’s advocacy of the decimation of American health care is long-standing. In a 1994 Journal of the American Medical Association article, he wrote, “Most metropolitan areas in the United States should reduce the number of centers engaging in cardiac surgery, high-risk obstetrics, neonatal intensive care, organ transplantation, tertiary cancer care, high-level trauma care, and high-technology imaging.”

A longtime advocate for better end-of-life care planning that saves the bottom line not lives.

The proposal in a nutshell. Insidious in that doctors would be paid with taxpayer money, to consul the terminally ill and the elderly on if they should just give up and die. Which would of been for all intents and purposes mini death panels set up in doctors offices across the country. Paid for by you.

The health care bill passed by the House in 2009 allowed Medicare to pay doctors for discussions of end-of-life care, including advance directives, in which patients can pay doctors indicate whether they want to forgo or receive aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

There is a reason Obama chose to bypass the senate confirmation process and instead take advantage of the recess appointment option to appoint Berwick as head of CMS. He was a toxic nomination who may not of survived the confirmation process. Obama knew the hurdles were high.  Given his views, Berwick of all people has no business being in charge of millions of lives.

Beck has more:

The scary part is that Obama wanted Berwick as head of CMS so badly, he would appoint him come hell or high water. Though not surprising since Obama and Berwick are two peas in a pod.

April 29 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.

The president’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had a hip replaced after she was diagnosed with cancer, Obama said in an interview with the New York Times magazine that was published today. Dunham, who lived in Honolulu, died at the age of 86 on Nov. 2, 2008, two days before her grandson’s election victory.

“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”

Obama said “you just get into some very difficult moral issues” when considering whether “to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill.

“That’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues,” he said in the April 14 interview. “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health-care bill out here.”

On a slightly personal note. I recently met an 80 something year old man who had a heart transplant while in his 70′s. Last year he celebrated his tenth year of extended life thanks to the transplant. Would he of been so fortunate if Obama and Berwick had been the ones in charge of his health care???

Then there is this comment that was left on my contact page:

I know a healthy, beautiful 68 year old who has had two lumpectomies this year. Her (formally liberal) doctor cried at her last check-up.
The doctor is getting as many mri’s and surgeries done as possible before january.
This doctor was in tears and explained she had been to a meeting in dc and that the meeting was “militant”. she said they were told that they were not going to be allowed to do breast cancer surgery or mri’s on anyone over 60. (EVEN IF THE PATIENT PAID THEMSELVES) They were threatened with loss of their licenses.
I am telling the truth.
Where is the press?

A frightening thought is it not? Anyone else hear of such a thing? I have no idea if the above has any truth to it. But then again nothing shocks me when it comes to the present administration.

Also see:

• JW Sues Health and Human Services to Obtain Documents Regarding Medicare/Medicaid Review of Cancer Treatment Provenge – Judicial Watch Investigates Charge HHS is Unlawfully Rationing Healthcare by Targeting FDA-approved Medical Treatment Based on Cost
• How Donald Berwick Will Run Your Health Care
• Obamacare Ends Construction of Doctor-Owned Hospitals
• They Did It. FDA Bans Breast Cancer Drug Avastin

Related:

• Obama Economics Adviser Robert Reich Explains How Public Option Health Care Will Let You Die

I can not stress this enough. Keep your eyes and ears open America. With a GOP controlled congress, controller of the purse strings, Obama’s back is up against the wall.