Years after Sarah Palin was mocked, and even received a Lie Of The Year award from Politifact, for suggesting that Obamacare contained ‘death panels’, the New York Times has reported that as early as next year Medicare will indeed reimburse doctors for end-of-life consultations.
Critics state that this will end up encouraging sick patients to reject costly treatments that would prolong their life. Of course, doctors will be on the government payroll, who will want to cut healthcare costs…if not for any reason than to line their pockets with more money, like we’ve seen at the VA.
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<!–nextpage–>And after the government ends up choosing who can go to medical school, which is surely on the government’s agenda, well…
End-of-life care represents around 22% of all of medical spending in the US. A former Obama adviser, Steve Rattner, has openly stated that we ‘need death panels’ to curb healthcare costs for everyone.
“We need death panels,” Rattner simply wrote. “ Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”
DUNDEE, N.Y. — Five years after it exploded into a political conflagration over “death panels,” the issue of paying doctors to talk to patients about end-of-life care is making a comeback, and such sessions may be covered for the 50 million Americans on Medicare as early as next year.
Bypassing the political process, private insurers have begun reimbursing doctors for these “advance care planning” conversations as interest in them rises along with the number of aging Americans. People are living longer with illnesses, and many want more input into how they will spend their final days, including whether they want to die at home or in the hospital, and whether they want full-fledged life-sustaining treatment, just pain relief or something in between. Some states, including Colorado and Oregon, recently began covering the sessions for Medicaid patients.
But far more significant, Medicare may begin covering end-of-life discussions next year if it approves a recent request from the American Medical Association, the country’s largest association of physicians and medical students. One of the A.M.A.’s roles is to create billing codes for medical services, codes used by doctors, hospitals and insurers. It recently created codes for end-of-life conversations and submitted them to Medicare.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, would not discuss whether it will agree to cover end-of-life discussions; its decision is expected this fall. But the agency often adopts A.M.A. recommendations, which are developed in meetings attended by its representatives. And the political environment is less toxic than it was when the “death panel” label was coined; although there are still opponents, there are more proponents, including Republican politicians.
If Medicare adopts the change, its decision will also set the standard for private insurers, encouraging many more doctors to engage in these conversations.
“We think it’s really important to incentivize this kind of care,” said Dr. Barbara Levy, chairwoman of the A.M.A. committee that submits reimbursement recommendations to Medicare. “The idea is to make sure patients and their families understand the consequences, the pros and cons and options so they can make the best decision for them.”
Now, some doctors conduct such conversations for free or shoehorn them into other medical visits. Dr. Joseph Hinterberger, a family physician here in Dundee, wants to avoid situations in which he has had to decide for incapacitated patients who had no family or stated preferences.
Recently, he spent an unreimbursed hour with Mary Pat Pennell, a retired community college dean, walking through advance directive forms. Ms. Pennell, 80, who sold her blueberry farm and lives with a roommate and four cats, quickly said she would not want to be resuscitated if her heart or lungs stopped. But she took longer to weigh options if she was breathing but otherwise unresponsive.
“I’d like to be as comfortable as I can possibly be,” she said at first. “I don’t want to choke, and I don’t want to throw up.”
With reimbursement, “I’d do one of these a day,” said Dr. Hinterberger, whose 3,000 patients in the Finger Lakes region range from college professors to Mennonite farmers who tie horse-and-buggies to his parking lot’s hitching post.
If Medicare covers end-of-life counseling, that could profoundly affect the American way of dying, experts said. But the impact would depend on how much doctors were paid, the allowed frequency of conversations, whether psychologists or other nonphysicians could conduct them, and whether the conversations must be in person or could include phone calls with long-distance family members. Paying for only one session and completion of advance directives would have limited value, experts said.
“This notion that somehow a single conversation and the completion of a document is really an important intervention to the outcome of care is, I think, a legal illusion,” said Dr. Diane E. Meier, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care. “It has to be a series of recurring conversations over years.”
End-of-life planning remains controversial. After Sarah Palin’s “death panel” label killed efforts to include it in the Affordable Care Act in 2009, Medicareadded it to a 2010 regulation, allowing the federal program to cover “voluntary advance care planning” in annual wellness visits. But bowing to political pressure, the Obama administration had Medicare rescind that portion of the regulation. In doing so, Medicare wrote that it had not considered the viewpoints of members of Congress and others who opposed it.
Politically, the issue was dead. But private insurers, often encouraged by doctors, began taking steps.
knew that
pray this isn’t true…. or is it population control or p**s on the old people!?
Wtf
WE KNEW THAT, LAST YEAR….
Old, white folks are targeted for termination? Do not listen to the devil.
The devil is death. God is life. The devil will destroy all the he touches, as he tries to rise above God, to be worshipped as God, and he find the Israelis, and the Middle-Eastern Christians, and America and Texas to be in the way. He will try to imbue all facets, Education, the Government, the Ministry, everything with political correctness, the control of speech and concomitant thought and actions, seeking control, and adherence to his decrees and pronouncements.
And it is the devil who will finally proffer the rope, or the pistol, and scream at you to commit suicide, if you will listen to him. And as to whether you die, he will say “What difference does it make?”
Ask Hillary about it. Or ask Obama, as he screams at us to accept his rule, and that we must pay our border, and as he screams at the Israelis to surrender to his spiritual brethren, the ISIS/Hamas/Muslims, who have vowed to do to the Israeilis what they did to the Middle-Eastern Christians, beheading the little kids, and cutting the throats of their mothers.
It does make a difference. Whether you would live or die.
And it makes a difference for your soul. And how from hell can ANYONE remain silent about such? I was a teacher. But it is Agape Love that I will not be silent. Silent, and allowing such as this? I would not be for all the world. And give me a shotgun, or a toothbrush, and line up the all the horde of hell. If God is for me, who will stand against me? God will care for me. I will trust in Him and no other. We need soldiers who will stand forth, no matter.
God does NOT want you to die for Him; God wants you to LIVE for Him.
Praise His name, God says we will not die. He demands the Israelis, His Chosen People, to wish for their lives, and that they fight for their survival. He DEMANDS no less from us. He DEMANDS that we not die. For dead men do not stand in the gap against evil, or fulfill the Great Commission.
According to John, in Revelation, so many stood before the throne that no man could number them. Their robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb. And they came from the Great Tribulation. And from those who stood forth, speaking the truth of God’s word, those who knew heaven to be their home, but that they were not in heaven, yet, and knowing they would answer questions when they got there. And it IS written the unprofitable servant will be cast into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You had better listen, preachers.
And He demands that we stand forth and speak the truth of His word. Even as the white liberals who pay, who worship, those who have rejected His word, and Him, who blindly plead the devil’s arguments, not caring for the lives of others, and not even caring for their own lives, scream and hiss, and furiously play their Race Cards, at one who would even mention the matter. And as those who receive do the same. As the cities burn, and they stand along the Rio Grande, continually saying they will kill us? They require silence? They require praise as you are killed? Worship as you are murdered? SLAVERY! And slavery simply because you will let them tell you that you owe them? The Great-American, Whore, White Sheople Christians? Jostled along, barefooted and limping on the broken concrete and shattered glass, sniffling, crying and whimpering, and wishing to be told lies, rather than the truth?
You will go to hell for that, if you listen to them.
God says fear he who can kill the body–and the soul–in hell, and that a lake of fire is reserved for cowards. God says do not listen to the Godless horde, and the devil, himself.
The ISIS/Hamas/Muslims stand along the Rio Grande, sharpening their machetes, as the Mexican President says “you owe, and you must pay (your border, and your resistance to the invasion of drugs and illegals), for you will be racist if you will not pay, and you cannot be racist.” Ask him about his own border. Ask him about Sgt. Tahmooressi.
God says we do not owe. GOD says we will not pay. God says we can go to hell, if we pay them, and they can go with us.
Tell the Mexican President, and Obama, and the ISIS/Hamas/Muslims, and their ally, The Reverend of the god of Racism, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackasson, and all of the Godless horde this:
WE DO NOT OWE! YOU CAN GO TO HELL!
God DEMANDS we NOT owe, and pay, and worship these others. He demands we stand forth and speak the truth of God’s word. And live. As the lover of money, The Reverend of the god of Racism, Al Sharpton, stands with his ISIS/Hamas/Muslim allies, and against us, and America, and God, telling you what your rights are, and what you are allowed to say, as they sharpen their machetes, and say “you owe, and you must pay, for you will be racist if you will not pay, and you cannot be racist.” Ask the Middle-Eastern Christians what they wish to charge us, as The Reverend of the god of Racism, Al Sharpton, and they, and the government, and the Trayvon Road Crew ties the hands of the police and incites the rioters, trying to make the American cities burn. As the concrete is broken, and the glass is shattered.
God says fear God. God says have faith in Him. God says we do not owe. God says we will not pay. God says we will listen to no argument such that we would disregard Him, or His word, or His Commandments, and consult the word of God, and ask Eve, from the Garden of Eden, if anything bad might happen if you would do so. God says you can go to hell if you do so, and that those you pay can go to hell with you.
God says his FIRST COMMANDMENT for a reason that we now see, and He is really, really serious.
God says “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”
He is not asking; He is telling; He is DEMANDING that we turn away and worship them no more, as King Obama would take the throne.
King Obama is enabled by WORSHIP, as all of the Godless horde, and the devil, himself, is enabled and empowered by worship.
God CANNOT stand for us, if we will worship others, owing and paying them.
God DEMANDS that we turn away from them, no matter how much they scream that you are racist because you will not pay them. By those who jump through the hoops, screaming they are not racist! Paying anything and everything! Forever! Worshipping!
Turn from them so that God CAN stand for us.
Tell them: WE DO NOT OWE. WE WILL NOT PAY. YOU CAN GO TO HELL. GOD SAYS YOU CAN GO TO HELL. WE WILL NOT GO WITH YOU.
And maybe some of them will repent, and not go to hell. And it is Agape Love that we wish that NONE of them would go to hell. They will surely go to hell if you give them what they ask.
Go practice: Stand in front of the mirror. Say this:
WE DO NOT OWE. YOU CAN GO TO HELL.
And as the agents provocateur settle in among us, and as the liberals hiss and scream, and play their Race Cards at one who would stand forth, who would dare speak at all, and instead of offering praise, would stand in the gap, calling evil what it is, do you believe I dreamed all this? Or do you believe that God speaks to us. This is what God says.
We depend on the word of God, according that it is the truth. And we pray let my words be your words.
Matthew 10:19: “18and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. 19″But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. 20″For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”
Where sin abounds grace does much more abound, and an Army comes. A worldwide Flood of the Spirit. For fields already white to harvest. They told me it would start in Texas.
Absolutely
B S
I’ll make it til we elect some one that is literate .
Seriously…that statement is just plain dumb.
Yes, I agree- Obama is death and he is destroying everything he touches as Obama is worshipped as a god by millions of un-informed voters whom elected him. These are truly dangerous times indeed!