The other Death Panels

These are not the Death Panels you are looking for. No really. This is not a Jedi mind trick reference.

Dropping the end-of-life counseling was no big deal. In fact, that sort of counseling made some sense. Having taken my grandfather to a number of doctor visits in the last few years, I can tell you there's already a private push for living wills and medical directives.

"Death Panel" is of course hyperbolic, but if there is such a thing that deserves to be called a Death Panel, it's the "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research" created by the stimulus. (How stimulated do you feel now?)

As Philip Klein writes in his AmSpec piece "Live or Let Die", Tom Daschle cooked up the idea of a Federal Health Board based on the UK's "National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence" (NICE). This is your basic "best practices" board -- the red pill or the blue pill sort of stuff. Except if we listen to Daschle, the Federal Health Board would be given legal authority:

For instance, Daschle explained, there could be a requirement that all government programs would have to abide by its recommendations and that requirement could extend to any private insurer participating in the government health insurance exchange. And as Daschle wrote, "Congress could opt to go further with the Board's recommendations. It could, for example, link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board's recommendations."

There's your Death Panel, not this stuff about end-of-life couseling. Grandma's hip replacement is on the line... how old is she now?  And no, you don't get the drops for your eye infection, you get the nasty cream.  Suck it up -- it's the law.

Klein's piece is a well written and nuanced look at the issue of care rationing, not some wild-eyed hit job.  I highly recommend reading it.

Posted by: JoeCollins at 10:03 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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