Talk about scare tactics and preying on the elderly.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX): We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won’t get the treatment as early as they need. […] I would rather stop this socialization of health care because once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise, where you live. […] But if we’re going to pay 700 million dollars like we voted last Friday to put condoms on wild horses, and I know it just says an un-permanent enhanced contraception whatever the heck that is. I guess it follows that they’re eventually get around to doing it to us.
And then there’s Virginia Foxx (R-NC) who claims that the Republican Plan (Umm… what plan?), unlike the Dem plan, “is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”
How is it possible to have a serious debate with people who talk like this? But, then again, I’m not their intended audience since I’ve traveled abroad, have family that live in Italy, Canada, Great Britian, and Australia, and actually have experienced socialized medicine. I know they’re lying.
UPDATE: TPM debunks the lie easily enough.
The provision at issue would require Medicare, for the first time, to cover advanced care consultations for seniors once every five years, or more frequently if the patient has a life threatening disease. These consultations include “an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.”
Seniors are in no way required to take advantage of this benefit. (Politico renders this information as: “it does not mandate individuals to take advantage of the benefit, proponents say.”) Indeed, the chief proponent of the notion that the consultations are required, reform opponent Betsy McCaughey, is reduced to arguing that, though they’re not technically mandated, seniors might feel pressured by doctors or nurses who suggest having such sessions.
Nor is there any reasonable basis for believing that these consultations, if chosen, would do anything to promote euthanasia — which is illegal in 48 states anyway. Discussions between sick or elderly people and their doctors about end-of-life treatment have long been an accepted part of modern patient care. As Politico itself notes, in 2003, a Bush administration agency “issued a 20-page report outlining a five-part process for physicians to discuss end-of-life care with their patients.” And since 1990, Congress has required health-care agencies to inform patients about state laws regarding advance directives such as a living will.
Everybody got that? You can stop hiding Grandma now.