{"id":37283,"date":"2011-01-07T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T00:10:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T00:10:09","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T00:10:09","slug":"why_fear_of_death_panels_is_real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2011\/01\/07\/why_fear_of_death_panels_is_real\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Fear of Death Panels is Real"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Jim in Nashville, great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Pleasure to talk to you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Same here, sir.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I feel like I should preface this by saying I followed you for years since the television days, and I agree with you almost all the time. But the other day you said something that really upset me, and I\u2019ve heard it go by a lot of conservatives and that was your comments regarding death panels. I am a doctor and I do end-of-life care, and so I am intimately involved with this subject. And the thing that bothers me, and you\u2019re the political expert so you can discuss I think more about what you feel is the meaning behind what was written in the health proposal. But I think there\u2019s a bigger issue, Rush, and that is the way that death is approached and handled in this country, and the thing is that whenever people start talking about the death panels it seems like the bigger issue gets swept under the rug. My question for you is, when four out of five people that die in this country are over 65, meaning they\u2019re Medicare recipients, and the way that death is approached in this country needs to be addressed and education needs to be put into it, how do we do that without everyone becoming alarmed by the language that is in the panel or that is in the document?<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s not the question that I was debating. That is an entirely different matter. All I was pointing out was that something that was not in the original Obamacare bill was going to be added in December, and that was that doctors who are paid by Medicare, because they see Medicare patients, were going to be told that if they ceased having at least once a year end-of-life discussion sessions, counseling sessions with their parents, that they were not going to be reimbursed, they were gonna be frozen out. In other words, it was a mild form of blackmail. You either implement government policy and you tell these patients about dying, you counsel them on it, whatever it is, or we\u2019re no longer gonna reimburse you for the work you do with any Medicaid patient. So that was properly seen as an attempt by the administration to sneak something back in by executive order. This was not done legislatively. <\/p>\n

It was kept out because it caused such a firestorm of opposition when it was first learned, when people started reading the original health care bill, they took it out because it was imperiling even Democrat votes, \u2019cause anything that even got close to confirming the existence of death panels, after all, what\u2019s a death panel? A death panel is some agent of the government getting involved in a discussion with a patient, and if you\u2019re a doctor being paid by Medicare, the government, being told you have to do this, you\u2019re seen as an agent of government, talk about their death and counseling them on ways, so forth. If it could get anywhere close to where people could say you are counseling somebody to get out of the way, accept that death is imminent, anything like that, then the death panel discussion is back and it\u2019s a political problem for Democrats. And that\u2019s why the whole thing came up, and it\u2019s been pulled again because they tried to sneak it in on the executive side just the latter part of December.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, and I\u2019m aware that it was pulled back out, and I agree with that, \u2019cause I don\u2019t know any doctor, including myself, and especially colleagues I have that do end-of-life care, I think we all operate under the premise of autonomy and people should be able to make decisions, but what bothers me — and I mean I was watching on Fox the other day, and the same thing happen because I see conservatives, which I consider myself one —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: — when they start talking about death in the country, they start talking about, ‘Well, everybody\u2019s gonna die and it\u2019s not like you need to be counseled on death,\u2019 and even you acknowledged the other day, ‘Well, maybe you should be counseled on some of the emotional aspects of –‘<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, it\u2019s because Obama himself in one of the debates on ABC TV about this, when a woman asked about her hundred-year-old grandmother who needed a hearing aid or some such thing, she asked Obama if that would be part of the coverage. He said, (paraphrasing) ‘No, no, we gotta start talking quality of life, too, we can\u2019t calculate spirit and how much she wants to live. Give her a pill. People like that we should just give \u2019em a pill.\u2019 So hip replacement or some such thing, just give \u2019em a pill, it\u2019s all incorporated. People know who this guy is. That\u2019s why this stuff can\u2019t be separated out.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I want to get into a little bit more detail, just a couple more things I want to say on this end of life stuff, death panel, but I will say this before we go to the break, I\u2019ve had these discussions, but not with a doctor. Lawyer, family planning, financial people, but not with a doctor, and certainly not a doctor paid by the government who is paying for my care.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line><\/line>RUSH: Two more things on this end of life business. First, I want you to rehear the Obama sound bite, June 24th of 2009, ABC News, primetime questions for the president, Prescription for America. This is during the thrust, if you will, of the health care debate. An audience member Jane Sturm — it\u2019s a handpicked audience, by the way — Jane Sturm stood up, she said: ‘My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctors said to her, ‘I can\u2019t do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.\u2019 I said, ‘Go for it.\u2019 She said, ‘Go for it.\u2019 But the specialist said, ‘No, she\u2019s too old.\u2019 But when the other specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, he said, ‘I\u2019m going for it.\u2019 That was over five years ago. … Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?\u2019 <\/line><\/p>\n

Now, before we get to Obama\u2019s answer, I have to tell you as an American, the fact that that question was being asked in my country in 2009 sent chills down my back. Here\u2019s an American citizen asking the president if her mother could get a pacemaker. We\u2019re in certain circumstances here where this woman has to go to the government, in this case the top dog, and get permission for a pacemaker, ‘Will Medicare, Medicaid pay for this?\u2019 Stop and think about that. I mean, you expect that to happen in Cuba or with the ChiComs or something, but it\u2019s a television show featuring the great unifying Barack Obama, and this woman, ‘Are you going to let my mother live?\u2019 I don\u2019t know about you, folks, but when I was growing up there are a number of things I thought never would happen to me. One of them is having to ask a government official for permission for any kind of medical procedure, or further, to ask a government official if I could get a medical procedure. I just never computed it. Here, this woman is saying, (paraphrasing) ‘My mother, she got it, she was fine, the specialist wouldn\u2019t give it to her, but they took her will to live into account, one specialist did, saw her spirit and love for life. Would you, Mr. President, factor that in when you decide who gets to live and die?\u2019<\/p>\n

OBAMA: I don\u2019t think that we can make judgments based on people\u2019s ‘spirit.\u2019 Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that, uh, we are going to provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we\u2019re going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they\u2019re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they\u2019re being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn\u2019t going to help. Maybe you\u2019re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller. <\/p>\n

RUSH: So on national TV the president of the United States told this woman essentially, ‘No, your mother\u2019s will to live, we\u2019re not gonna factor that in, we can\u2019t make judgments based on that. Too subjective. Take the pill. Take the painkiller. Take the painkiller instead of getting a pacemaker.\u2019 So that\u2019s why death panels, end-of-life counseling, we know what this guy — look, folks, we also understand this: The government\u2019s in charge paying for all these people\u2019s health care. We know they don\u2019t have the money. We know they\u2019re gonna have to ration. We know how they\u2019re gonna ration. You talk about subjective judgments, the judgment\u2019s gonna be who is most worthwhile for us to invest the medical cost in: somebody that\u2019s gonna die next year or somebody that\u2019s gonna take another 50 or 60 years to die? That\u2019s, sadly, what we\u2019ve come to. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you something else about this. The real scary thing about death panels, I\u2019ve had end-of-life discussions with family planning financial experts and lawyers and members of the family. But I\u2019ve yet to have one with a doctor. The documents that I\u2019m preparing with all these other people tell the doctor what to do. I don\u2019t need negotiation with the doctor, leaving him out of it. You see, the scary thing about death panels is leaving the authority over treatment, end of life and otherwise, to the very people who have a conflict of interest. And the people who have the conflict of interest are the government because they\u2019re charged with reducing costs. The government is the paying agent here in this case and in most of health care cases, the way we\u2019re headed, the government\u2019s the paying agent even if it\u2019s your insurance company, the government\u2019s the paying agent and they\u2019re charged with reducing costs? And they\u2019re gonna decide, tell your doctor he gets reimbursed or not? Not good. Just not kosher, this whole discussion. <\/p>\n

So the guy that called, the doctor, said he was offended — nobody was — well, I\u2019ll speak for myself. I was not criticizing doctors in discussing this attempt by the regime again to sneak this provision in that would basically tell doctors, ‘You don\u2019t hold those end-of-life discussions with your patients, you\u2019re not getting paid.\u2019 I mean, A, it\u2019s blackmail, and again, the end-of-life discussions take place with lawyers and other family members. You go to LegalZoom.com or whatever. Presumably at the time all this comes into play, you\u2019re not able to speak to a doctor. So if you\u2019re having end-of-life discussions with a doctor when you\u2019re cogent, and you\u2019re talking to somebody representing the paying agent — see, the real thing that\u2019s gonna kill everybody — this is what needs to be more properly stated — the real thing that\u2019s gonna kill everybody is debt panels, the government\u2019s debt panels, because the debt panels equal death panels because we are in debt and we don\u2019t have the money, and the paying agent is bankrupt, and printing money, and borrowing it from the ChiComs, the paying agent for senior citizens\u2019 health care. <\/p>\n

And now they want doctors to start having discussions about when it\u2019s appropriate for you to just check out. And we remember Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, we know that liberals are liberals and Democrats are Democrats, and we remember this guy saying back in the eighties, 20 years ago plus, this guy said old people have a duty to die and get out of the way. Well, when the president, when the secretary of Health and Human Services, when the paying agent starts talking that way, old people have a duty to die and then they assign doctors to have such conversations or they don\u2019t get paid, red flags go up all over the place, pure and simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Jim in Nashville, great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi. CALLER: Hi, Rush. Pleasure to talk to you. RUSH: Same here, sir. CALLER: I feel like I should preface this by saying I followed you for years since the television days, and I agree with you almost all the time. 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