Tag: United States Senate Committee on Finance

Health/Politics & Causes/USA
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Public option still alive: believe it…or not

by Fran Johns

The fact that there are still believers in the public option, and its inclusion in whatever health bill eventually survives, may say more about the believers than the belief. But Nancy Pelosi hasn’t yet caved, and a few among the many who see this as the only way real reform will happen are still betting on it. Two of those are strategic technology consultant Robert Weiner and his research chief Rebecca Vander Linde who penned an op ed in the San Francisco Chronicle Friday. I’m not a gambler, but I cheer their position.

Opponents’ caricatures have become commonplace – the Republican National Committee video puts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi side by side with James Bond’s villainess, Miss Galore. The Iowa Republican, a party newsletter, on Sept. 18 called Pelosi “inept at her job.” Actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson labeled her “naive.” On Sept. 10, master Republican strategist Karl Rove asked, “How much capital will Speaker Nancy Pelosi have” to pass health care?

Pelosi answered that in a conversation Sept. 29 at House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers‘ 80th birthday party, after the Senate Finance Committee had just rejected the Medicare-like public option for all by a 10-13 vote: “We will not be deterred. We will pass the bill.”

The public option is still viable. The House is set to pass it. It is neither “fading” nor “waning” (New York Times) nor on “life support” (ABC News).

Citing a recent CBS News poll that showed public support for the public option rose from 57 to 68 percent after President Obama’s speech to Congress in September, Weiner and Vander Linde argue that keeping it is the only way to “counter the insurance stranglehold” that makes our current system so dysfunctional — and that Pelosi will keep it in the blended version of the three House bills and eventually see it through.

For those who doubt Pelosi’s ability to pass the bill, know that she has passed every bill she has brought forward, usually with 60-plus margins, since the Democrats recaptured the House in 2006. These include the Recovery Act, Credit Card Bill of Rights, Homeowner Affordability, Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay, Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and State Children’s Health Program expansion to 11 million youths.

About the Senate…

Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he could not vote for the public option because “I can’t see how we get to 60 votes.” The Constitution and the law require only a majority 51. The Senate amended its rules to require a “supermajority” to end debate. This procedure, called cloture, is a pander to allow special-interest contributors (Baucus has a million dollars from insurance companies) to block bills. Pelosi is right to support Senate “reconciliation,” which would allow a simple majority to pass health reform Americans want.

We believers may turn out just to be dreamers, but we’re still sending e-mails to Speaker Pelosi.

via Public option still alive – believe it.

Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Counseling Improves Life's End. Surprise!

by Fran Johns

Knowledge, care and compassion really do bring peace. Why should this be a surprise? And why should a few strident opponents prevent those approaching life’s end from having this benefit?

A study appearing in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association points out the benefits of end-of-life counseling, although the widespread misinformation loose in the land may have doomed what should be a significant piece of health reform.

As a political uproar rages over end-of-life counseling, a new study finds offering such care to dying cancer patients improves their mood and quality of life.

The study of 322 patients in rural New Hampshire and Vermont also suggests the counseling didn’t discourage people from going to the hospital.

The Senate bill provision axed by Finance Committee chair Charles Grassley would have allowed coverage for conversations with physicians about things like hospice care, advance directives and treatment options.  But to opponents of reform, it was a handy attack mechanism. They enlisted a few standard bearers like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and media darling Rush Limbaugh to twist the issue into menacing “death panels,” and in no time at all Sen. Grassley had his excuse to excise.

Losers in this are all of us. Eventually, 100% of us will die. Aggressive treatment and expensive, futile procedures are common today to that experience; compassion and peace are harder to come by.

In the new study, trained nurses did the counseling with patients and family caregivers using a model based on national guidelines. All the patients in the study had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Half were assigned to receive usual care. The other half received usual care plus counseling about managing symptoms, communicating with health care providers and finding hospice care.

Patients who got the counseling scored higher on quality of life and mood measures than patients who did not.

Could someone please get this information to Sarah Palin?

Study: End-of-life advice aids terminally ill.

Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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End-of-Life Care is Losing to Lies

by Fran Johns

Here is some of the current worst news on health reform:

The Senate Finance Committee’s health care plan will not include provisions dealing with end-of-life care, now one of the more controversial topics in the health care debate, the committee’s top Republican said on Wednesday.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said in a statement that the committee “dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

If anyone knows misinterpretation, it’s Senator Grassley. He’s the originator of such enlightened parting phrases as the one he tossed out at an Iowa meeting Wednesday, about not wanting a health plan “that will pull the plug on grandma.” There is, of course, no grain of truth in that phrase, but its repetition does exactly what Sen. Grassley and his ilk wish: whip the opposition to any real reform into an emotional, unthinking frenzy. And they are winning the war against reason one battle at a time.

A Senate Finance Committee aide confirmed that the panel was not discussing end-of-life measures, adding that they were “never a major focus” of the committee’s negotiations.

House committees have passed legislation that would provide Medicare coverage for optional counseling sessions on end-of-life services.

But as people like Senator Grassley, and former N.Y. Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey who sought fame and perhaps fortune by starting this whole flap, keep the country inflamed with misinformation the chances of decent legislation rising from these ashes grow dim.

The hopeless optimists of the land continue to believe that calls and letters and e-mails of sanity will convince our legislators that the country will rally around a decent bill… but Mr. Grassley and Ms. McCaughey are making optimism difficult.

via Senate Bill Will Not Address End-of-Life Care – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.