Thread: Obamacare Fear-Mongering Hall of Fame: Death Panels and More

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Obamacare Fear-Mongering Hall of Fame: Death Panels and More

by Jamelle Bouie Sep 30, 2013 5:45 AM EDT

The law was going to build a ‘private army.’ It was the largest tax increase in the ‘history of the world.’ As the Obamacare exchanges prepare to open for business, Jamelle Bouie has the most outlandish false claims.

In their push to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act, conservative Republicans have cast the health-care law in near-apocalyptic terms. Lawmakers such as Louisiana Rep. John Fleming have called Obamacare “the most dangerous legislation ever passed in Congress.” Likewise, during his extended speech in opposition to the law, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared it was “driving up health-care costs,” “killing health benefits,” and “shattering the economy.” Indeed, after nearly four years, there is a treasure trove of hyperbolic, over-the-top soundbites about it.

As Republicans wreak havoc in their effort to repeal the law, it’s worth looking at the most extreme statements they’ve made about the dreaded Affordable Care Act.

Tea Party activists host the “Exempt America From Obamacare” rally held at the White House on September 10, 2013. (Mark Peterson/Redux)

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”

This, from Sarah Palin, came during the summer of 2009, when Congress was debating the proposal that would become the Affordable Care Act. It’s where we get the term “death panel,” a grossly distorted reference to the Independent Payment Review Board, an organization created to reduce costs in Medicare and the broader health-care system. The important thing to remember, however, is that there’s nothing in the Affordable Care Act that forces doctors to use one procedure over another or that takes away care from the elderly or the infirm.

“A clause hidden in the Obamacare bill, which is now law, gives Obama the right to form a private army.”

We can thank Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson for this claim, which quickly made its way through the fever swamps of the right wing. Here are the facts: the Affordable Care Act creates a “Ready Reserve Corps” that exists to augment the “Commission Corps,” a uniformed group of health professionals who work with the U.S. military on humanitarian missions. It is the furthest possible thing from a “private army.”

“Obamacare is … the largest tax increase in the history of the world.”

This comes from Rush Limbaugh, who is no stranger to ridiculous statements about President Obama or the Affordable Care Act. The health-care law does raise taxes—from an increase in the Medicare payroll tax to a new annual fee on health insurance providers—but those increases pale in comparison with past tax hikes.

The largest tax increase in U.S. history was the Revenue Act of 1942, which raised taxes by 5.04 percent of gross domestic product. By contrast, the tax increases in Obamacare amount to .49 percent of total GDP, or a tax hike as large as the one signed by George H.W. Bush in 1990.

“Seventy-five percent of small businesses now say they are going to be forced to either fire workers or cut their hours.”


Florida Sen. Marco Rubio made this claim in an op-ed for Fox News over the summer, defending his support for defunding the Affordable Care Act and blocking its implementation. As he wrote, “ObamaCare encourages you to hold back on hiring new workers or cut the hours of existing ones so that you don’t reach 50 employees.” The problem, as you’ve guessed by now, is he’s wrong. Politifact offers a detailed explanation, but the short of it is that the survey in question is too vague to draw such a broad conclusion. What’s more, most small businesses have 10 or fewer employees and are exempt from the employer mandate. And the great majority of larger businesses—those with 25 to 49 employees—already offer health insurance. As for businesses with 50 to 199 employees? Ninety-four percent already offer benefits.

Not only did Rubio make up a number, but he’s also warning against a problem that doesn’t exist.

“That’s why we’re here because we’re saying let’s repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens!”

Michele Bachmann, everyone. The only thing to say about this is it isn’t true in the least. Indeed, the claim is so outlandish that even Obama felt the need to mock it: “Now I have to say that that one was from six months ago. I just want to point out that we still have women. We still have children, and we still have senior citizens.”

That Republicans are willing to go this far to discredit the Affordable Care Act isn’t a surprise. When the Obamacare exchanges open for business on Tuesday, millions of Americans will have access to affordable health care for the first time in their lives. If everything works as expected, the law will become an integral part of the welfare state, at which point Republicans will have to reconcile themselves to a reality where health insurance is a right for most Americans.

You can think of this rhetoric—and the push for shutdown from Tea Party conservatives—as a reluctant recognition that the battle is lost.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/30/obamacare-fear-mongering-hall-of-fame-death-panels-and-more.html

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The Daily Beast, in my opinion, is a great source of fake news that gets printed. JMO

NIH OFFERS RESEARCH GRANTS ON 'PALLIATIVE CARE' FOR OLDER AMERICANS




by DR. SUSAN BERRY
6 Oct 2013 POST A COMMENT

The National Institute of Health (NIH), part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has begun to solicit applications for federal grants to study ways to provide “palliative care” to older Americans at points earlier than end-of-life—including during time spent in assisted living facilities, short-term and long-term care facilities, and even ambulatory care.

“Palliative care” is specialized medical care for those with serious illnesses. Though this type of care can be given along with curative treatment for illness, its main focus is on providing patients with relief from the pain, symptoms, and stress of a serious illness rather than curing the illness or disease itself.

The Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA) for the grants, which are worth up to $275,000, specifically state that they will be awarded for research on geriatric populations who are not in “hospice and end-of-life settings,” but, rather, “in settings and at time points earlier in geriatric patients’ disease of disability trajectories.”

One funding opportunity description notes:

As the population ages, the prevalence of diseases and conditions common in aging is also expected to increase. Dementia and cognitive impairment, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and chronic lung disease will likely continue to be the greatest sources of morbidity and mortality among older adults, as well as the costliest conditions to healthcare systems; however, the development of targeted interventions for specific chronic diseases has far outpaced the development of approaches to preserve the quality of life for patients living with such diseases.
The growing recognition that disease-specific management has failed to address the total health needs of patients with serious illness underscores the necessity to advance the science of palliative care.

The FOAs note that the “American population is currently experiencing unprecedented growth in numbers and in age.”
Additional guidance to applicants states:

Intervention studies may include traditional randomized controlled designs or more innovative approaches, such as adaptive designs. Low-cost pragmatic trials are particularly encouraged as they approximate more closely real-world practice. Studies that evaluate the effects of an intervention should define its specific parameters such that other investigators or providers may accurately replicate the intervention. For example, addition of expertise (e.g., academic detail, consultation, informal caregiver) or diagnostic method (e.g., geriatric assessment) should also include information about what specifically will be done and how subsequent management decisions will be informed. For any intervention study, applicants are encouraged to include patient-centered outcomes and, when possible, cost-effectiveness analyses.

NIH also provides some of its specific topics of interest. Among them are:

• Evaluation of discontinuing treatments hypothesized to be unnecessary in specific populations of older adults or in specific settings, and barriers to such discontinuation among patients and caregivers.
• Development and evaluation of novel strategies to improve advance care planning and/or articulation of treatment preferences among older adults.
• Development and evaluation of innovative decision aids for seriously ill older patients and/or their proxy decision-makers, such as prognosis calculators and communication of prognosis.
• Evaluation of new technologies for acquiring data about symptoms, quality of life, treatment preferences, and other variables not routinely captured as specific data elements in studies of older adults.
• Addressing systemic challenges in conducting research studies of palliative care in older adults, such as barriers to care, high rates of disability and mortality, and compliance among patients, caregivers/family members, and providers.
• Analysis of the effects of coverage policies of Medicare and other care funders on timely access to appropriate palliative care, and of the effects of care coordination, payment bundling, or other organizational and financing innovations on timely access to appropriate palliative care.
• http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...lder-Americans

SEE ALSO from NIH.

Medicine and Health Care

End-of-Life / Palliative Care
http://bioethics.od.nih.gov/endoflife.html