SCENARIOS-US Senate now in healthcare spotlight

WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) – After a narrow win in the U.S. House of Representatives, President Barack Obama’s fight for a sweeping healthcare overhaul moves to the U.S. Senate where it faces a difficult path to approval. Read the full story

The Washington Post:

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

– At long last, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on Chairman Max Baucus’s health-care bill. If the bill can’t gather at least one Republican vote — that means you, Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), above — expect Baucus’s name to be taken in vain by angry liberals who watched the protracted process the Montana Democrat oversaw in the name of bipartisanship result in a bill that left them less than pleased. Read the full story

Supermarkets’ Bloody Vaccination Campaign Advances “Health Care Reform” by Lethal Injections

By Dr. Leonard Horowitz and Sherri Kane 09-26-09

Wondering why food stores and pharmacies have replaced doctors offices and clinics as vaccination stations? Ask Steve Burd, the wizard behind Obama’s Health Care Reform plan.

Burd, the Chairman of Safeway Supermarkets (VONS, Pavilions, and more) is also the founder of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR) in the US., and Burd has his fingers in more pies than healthcare. Read the full story

Olbermann Offers “Special Comment” On Joe Wilson: ‘You’ve Embarrassed The Nation‘

On “Countdown” tonight host Keith Olbermann offered a “Special Comment” about Republican Congressman Joe Wilson yelling out “you lie” during President Obama’s speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Olbermann concludes that the only thing more offensive and embarrassing than the lack of civility Wilson displayed in “shouting at the President like he was a referee at a ball game and you were a drunk in the stands,” is that Wilson was glaringly wrong in a comment that has “embarrassed the nation.”

Olbermann digs deeper to uncover Wilson’s sometimes tumultuous relationship with the truth.

This is a topic, in my opinion, that has not been brought up enough when health care reform is discussed. This has been taken from getreaal.com and contains very valuable information which allows citizens to inform themselves on this issue.

Just as it has been stated on GetREAAL, “according to Benjamin Franklin, our elected officials are civil servants.”

If you find this information helpful, please take the time to visit GetREAAL and respond to some of the polls they have put up along with other helpful information as well. Read the full story

The Veterans Affairs (VA) office has returned to past efforts now that a new president is in office. The VA has gone back to using “Your Life, Your Choices.” The VA’s end of life planning guide has raised questions from the past administration, and other groups as well. If you aren’t familiar with this, please read the article below. If you’re curious why so many people have raised questions about alleged “death panels,” you’ll find a better understanding here as well. The author of “Your Life, Your choices” has an interesting past as well….

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html

By JIM TOWEY

If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran’s health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update “Your Life, Your Choices” between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices”).

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.

Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called “Five Wishes” that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA’s document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.

After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.

If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on “Your Life, Your Choices.” He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.

Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.

The Obama administration has launched a new Web site to battle what it calls “wild rumors” about the health care reform plans being pushed through Congress — including an invitation for the public to tattle on any other “myths” they come across.

It comes a week after the White House asked the public to send in “fishy” information about health care reform. Read the full story

flag@whitehouse.gov

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

My question is, why is the government asking us to spy on each other? Seems very unethical..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/