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Aug 12 2009, 7:53 pm by Marc Ambinder

A Tale Of Two Senators On Death Panels

Say you're a Republican who is inclined to vote "no" on health care reform. Should you go out of your way to address misinformation about a bill you probably aren't going to support?  Spreading false info could hasten the bill's defeat, of course.  Different lawmakers are taking different approaches.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, at a town hall meeting today in Iowa, is taking the Saul Alinsky-end-justifies-the-means approach. Today, he essentially ratified the fears of those who are convinced that the House and Senate bills will require euthanasia counseling for old, sick people. As the Politico's Ben Smith noted, he veered mighty close to the "Deather" worldview:

"I won't name people in Congress, people in Washington, but there's some people that think it's a terrible problem that Grandma's laying in the hospital bed with tubes in her and think that there ought to be some government policy that enters into that," Grassley said, adding that he thinks such matters should be left to the family.

This is just false. Grassley ought to know better; he's in the thick of negotiations.

Grassley's colleague, Lisa Murkowski, took a wholly different approach.

"It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there's these end-of-life provisions, these death panels. Quite honestly, I'm so offended at that terminology because it absolutely isn't (in the bill). There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill."

Besides, said Murkowski, "There are things that are in this bill that are bad enough that we don't need to be making things up."


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Comments (3)

jpeckjr

So if Grassley thinks "such matters" should be left to the family, then why did the Republicans pass legislation and agitate so vociferously to keep Terry Schaivo alive? Her legal next of kin -- her husband -- had the authority through marriage to make decisions about her care. Republicans orchestrated and drove the bulldozer to try to get that authority taken away from her husband, her husband by traditional, opposite gender marriage. (Frankly, I considered it an attack on traditional marriage, but that's another comment). NOW it should be left to the family? What a hypocrite!

handlethetruth

He didn't "ratify" the fears of people who think the bills would require euthanasia. He said, accurately, that some people think it's a terrible problem that "Grandma's laying in the hospital bed with tubes in her and think that there ought to be some government policy that enters into that." That's just a statement of fact. Hell, Obama has walked right up to the line on that one.

handlethetruth

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, 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.

DAVID LEONHARDT: So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.