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EDITORIAL: Health-reform lies
13 months ago | 848 views | 5 
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E-mails have widely spread false information on the Internet, and it has been exploited, in some cases by stridently partisan opponents of health care reform, as gospel.
This is the fact: The 1,000-page-plus bill known as HR3200 contains language that, if enacted, would offer health-professional counseling to individuals about which advance directives, if any, they might use to define the kind of care they receive in final illnesses.
The practice of advance-care directives is widespread and accepted. It includes living wills with explicit instructions about what should be done for individuals in final illnesses, and what should not be done. It allows people to make ethical, legal, moral choices about treatments, prolonging life, and when additional treatment should not be pursued.
Many physicians, hospitals and clergy urge their patients and congregants to consider such directives as a matter of personal choice.
Nothing in HR3200 requires end-of-life-choices, nor does it require even counseling about possible choices. It's simply an option available for discussion.
The bill requires that any choices discussed conform to the laws of the state in which an individual resides.
Page 424 of the text of HR3200 allows this:
"An explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses. ... An explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy. ... The provision by the practitioner of a list of 23 of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning, including the national toll-free hotline, the advance care planning clearinghouses, and State legal service organizations (including those funded through the Older Americans Act of 1965). ... 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."
The Web site is energycommerce.house.gov.
If you receive any e-mail that makes claims about health care reform, no matter what direction those claims lean, check they facts before you send it to someone else.
The proposed reforms are complex, and getting them right as a proposal, much less a new law, is unfairly burdened by unprincipled claims that are rooted in lies and casually tossed around in the name of opposition.
Many good causes lose to treachery.
Decide health-care reforms on the truth.
No one knows what is in the Obama health care plan. When someone say they are reading the bill..Which one?
If you think the government will cure health care problems, you do not know the facts. ie. Medicare is government insurance for those on social sceurity, yet you need private insurance just to pay the co-pay. The government dictates what a doctor can charge, our private insurance would be less expensive if private companies could dictate prices like the government.
Obama care is scary regardless of the above article. In 2006 Obama said we WILL have nationalized health care.
Obama's sick plan is to destroy those people making too much money. He has taken over the banks, car companies and is directing funds to his croonies to build solar and wind farms going nowhere.
Obama says healthcare will not be retioned..It will be rationed simply because the government will not have the money to pay their bills.
"Affordable?" Anyone who thinks he'll be spending less on health care after it comes under the control of the Puzzle Palace on the Potomac, call me. I have some affordable real estate in Manhattan you might be interested in...or a nice bridge to Brooklyn, maybe?
I have been carrying two insurance policies for years, so I've done my share in subsidizing the uninsured, and I don't resent it. I do resent paying more for less, the government having warrant-free access to my bank account -- including the right to draft from it, etc., etc.
I have been of the opinion that the IQ of lawyers in the US has been edging ahead of physicians for the past few years. When this ugly baby is born, physicians will become the new public school teachers. Bright lawyers will earn good money for years to come challenging various provisions of this thing piecemeal.
Thank God some Congressmen had the manhood to keep this thing from being rammed through before anyone found out what a house of horrors it is.
The health care initiative was born of good intentions, but I'm sure you all know what well-trod path is paved with that aggregate.
Fear factor politics as usual control and influence the ignorant & uninformed!
Snuff-dippin backwards mentallity fuels the 'Hooray for ME and screw YOU!' AND 'I'm lookin out for ME and MINE!' attitudes of the pathetic ones that cannot think for themselves.