Chicago Sun-Times Editorial: GOP scare tactics could hurt seniors

Chicago Sun-Times Editorial: GOP scare tactics could hurt seniors
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
August 15, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1717889,CST-EDT-edit16.article


First, a faction of Republican politicians took a perfectly reasonable health-care benefit for senior citizens -- end-of-life counseling -- and turned it into the boogeyman.

"We should not have a government plan that will pull the plug on grandma," Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa warned.

Democratic health-care reform will require "end-of-life counseling for seniors that might encourage them to give up when facing serious illness," read a flier passed out by U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert of Hinsdale.

Now, Grassley and other conservative Republican politicians want to make sure seniors are denied what is in fact a reasonable and desirable benefit. They have removed coverage for end-of-life counseling from the Senate's version of the health reform bill.

Shame on all of them.

It's one thing for the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the world to beat the drum on imaginary "death panels."

We expect nothing better from them. They've always added to the noise in public policy debates, not the substance.

But when mainstream, usually respected politicians pick up the lie, repeat it and lend it their credibility, they do a massive disservice to the very people they claim they are helping -- senior citizens who have an understandable anxiety about any potential changes to their health-care benefits.

To recap, the reform measure would have had Medicare pay doctors to counsel patients on living wills, hospice care, power of attorney and other issues that can come up toward the end of life.

Right now, the feds don't pay explicitly for this, so as you might imagine, it doesn't happen as early or as often as it should.

Any family that has gone through such a tough experience knows it's preferable to have all these issues sorted out well before they arise. At a certain point, their loved ones may no longer be able to communicate their wishes, and by then, it's too late.

Section 1233 of the House bill doesn't mandate that this counseling happen. You can take it or leave it. It just allows for doctors to get paid for it.

Not all Republicans share the blame on this. Recall that it was a Republican senator from Georgia, Johnny Isakson, who sponsored an early version of the proposal.

When the Washington Post asked Isakson how end-of-life counseling got turned into euthanasia, he said: "I have no idea . . . How someone could take an end-of-life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up."

The AARP -- not exactly a radical organization -- favors the measure, too. So if you want to believe the scare tactic, as we've noted before, then you have to believe the AARP has turned into an organization that wants to subject its very membership to euthanasia counseling.

The only reason for mainstream politicians to use this scare tactic is to reap political gain at the expense of arguably the most important issue facing the country. The further tragedy is that there are plenty of legitimate questions about Democratic health-care proposals, from their cost to their reputed cost savings.

The proposals are far from perfect, but not for the reasons some mainstream Republicans have latched onto.

Those politicians have taken the easy route.

They've embraced the Big Lie.

And pushed the real needs of senior citizens and their families to the sidelines.