Dr. Milton Wolf has written an op-ed in the Washington Times that explains why you should be worried about those “death panels” that the Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself) keep telling us don’t exist:
Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama’s choice as Medicare chief, in a profoundly arrogant move, reinstated, effective this week, the very end-of-life provision that Congress rejected, but with an accelerated payment scheme that effectively will result in even more elderly Americans being nudged to forgo medical care.
Did you get that part about the “accelerated payment”? This means that the doctor will receive financial incentives to encourage Granny to make decisions NOW about medical care she may need in the FUTURE.
The problem isn’t that the physician will deliberately give his patient bad advice. It is that his crystal ball is no better than Granny’s. They will be discussing future events, which means they will have incomplete data.
Obviously, it’s important for doctors, patients and families to discuss end-of-life issues. We are all going to die sooner or later, and there are sometimes good reasons to say “enough.” But that’s not the government’s call.
[I]t’s a far too important part of the doctor-patient relationship to permit the government to determine how and when.
Why? Because government and politicians are generally untrustworthy. That’s why we have the Constitution to keep them in check. Even when they mean well, they often do stupid and harmful things.
And, considering their well-documented history of corruption and outright prevarication, neither Donald Berwick nor his boss have provided much evidence that they mean well.
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