Free Republic

The Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president’s healthcare law. The money is only part of the IRS’s total implementation spending, and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible for several key provisions of the new law, including the unpopular individual mandate. Republican lawmakers have tried to cut off funding to implement the healthcare law, at least until after the Supreme Court decides whether to strike it down. That ruling is expected by June, and oral arguments last week indicated the justices might well...

She is a 91-year-old grandmother, who is not known for knitting afghans and scarves, but she does lovingly fashion hoods that kill. Charlotte started making and selling these suicide kits out of her cozy Southern California home after watching her husband die a slow and painful death from colon cancer. She blames doctors for keeping him alive. “It was terrible to treat people that way… To make them suffer to the bitter end,” Charlotte said. Charlotte, who sells her controversial kits for $60, demonstrated how they work in front of our cameras. “To die with this helium just takes you...

Offended by President Obama's decision to force health insurers to pay for contraception and surgical sterilization? It gets worse: In the future, thanks to ObamaCare, the government will issue such health edicts on a routine basis—and largely insulated from public view. This goes beyond contraception to cancer screenings, the use of common drugs like aspirin, and much more. Under ObamaCare, a single committee—the United States Preventative Services Task Force—is empowered to evaluate preventive health services and decide which will be covered by health-insurance plans. The task force already rates services with letter grades of "A" through "D" (or "I," if...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

<p>In 2009 Sarah Palin (citing economist Thomas Sowell) warned that the only way the government would reduce the price of medical care (often misrepresented as costs) would be to withhold treatment and that under Obamacare death panels would be assigned to mete out treatment. Liberals went ape over this. The people at Politifact were so livid that they invented a Lie Of The Year award and gave it to Sarah Palin.</p>

From Mark's website - Also, Mark gets an excellent call from a neurosurgeon who gives an inside look on what exactly Obamacare will do. For example, instead of patients, some people over a certain age will be considered, "units," as they try to dehumanize patients and the care they receive.

A neurosurgeon, vetted by Levin's staff, calls Mark and talks about what he knows about Obamacare Death Panels. From 11/22/11

End-of-Life Surgery May Be Overused in Medicare, Harvard Researchers Say“In a lot of places, we’re doing a lot of these surgeries I think unnecessarily,” Jha said in an interview. “We’re not having the kinds of conversations with patients that we need to have, about what they want out of their last few days and how we help them achieve those goals.” Or, how to help them help the Single Payer achieve it's goals: cost reduction. We recommend searching "the intellectual roots of the Third Reich" to see what the Ivory Tower was saying about who should and should not be...

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), established under Obamacare, has asked the American public to comment on the Institute's definition of "patient-centered outcomes research." DEADLINE - THIS Friday, September 2. In short, PCORI's definition is deceptive and leaves the public thinking that PCORI (pronounced "pee-CORE-ee") is going to do great work. However, the definition is not patient-centered. It's government-centered. Despite assertions to the contrary, the controversial "comparative effectiveness research" will be used by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to make insurance coverage decisions for all citizens.

A Food and Drug Administration panel today voted 6-0 to halt the use of cancer drug Avastin for the treatment of breast cancer, saying studies have failed to show Avastin is effective for that purpose. The recommendation came after two days of testimony from patients, doctors, and advocacy groups. The panel faced several tearful accounts of women, young and old, who believed Avastin saved their lives.

Elderly people in the Netherlands are so fearful of being killed by doctors that they carry cards saying they do not want euthanasia, according to a campaigner who says allowing assistant suicide in Britain would put the vulnerable at risk. [...] In an article published on BMJ.com on Friday, Mr Fitzpatrick wrote: “Disabled people, like others, and often with more reason, need to feel safe. Thus eroding what may already be a shaky sense of safety in medical care poses a further threat to disabled people’s wellbeing...and life itself.” He cited the experience of Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, the disabled...

Contemplating the 2012 election that can already be seen looming on the distant horizon, the President's advisors were no doubt hoping that the "death panel" debate was dead. But Obama himself inadvertently resurrected it when ...he claimed that Medicare costs will be kept under control by the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Obamacare opponents have been screaming about this committee since it was first added to the "reform" bill. And, since that time, anyone with the temerity to call it by its proper name -- death panel -- has been vilified by the Democrats and the "news" media. Nonetheless, that's...

Health Reform: A Canada court had ruled that under socialized medicine their baby must die in the hospital. Now he's in the U.S., getting the care his parents, not the bureaucrats, want. Joseph Maraachli, who’d been set to have his ventilator removed against his parents’ wishes at an Ontario hospital last month, got a tracheotomy Monday morning and is doing well, his family says. The procedure was denied him under a system of medicine that may be coming to a hospital near you courtesy of ObamaCare. His parents, Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader, took Joseph to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical...

First Obama pushed for end-of-life counseling in ObamaCare, then it was pulled after Sarah Palin rightly pointed out the spooky nature of the death panels (you put this in as a cost saving feature of a bill and you're damn right its a death panel). Then Dr. Donald "I love Socialism" Berwick, head of Medicare, put it back in...this time during the yearly Medicare checkups, and he tried to do it all sly like and back door the thing. He got caught and now Obama is pulling it once again: Reversing a potentially controversial decision, the Obama administration will...

Health Reform: A date's been set for the attempted repeal of the greatest federal control of our lives, and even our deaths, perhaps ever. Senate Democrats say over their dead political bodies. Game on. You could call this GOP Congress a death panel for Obama-Care itself. The decision to pull the political plug has been made and the date is set. The text of the repeal bill is already online, at rules-republicans.house.gov. Putting key bills online before they were voted on is something President Obama and the Democrats promised but never did. The attempt may be futile — the Democrats...

At a stroke, Medicare chief Donald Berwick has revived the "death panel" debate from two summers ago. Allow us to referee, because this topic has been badly distorted by the political process—and in a rational world, it wouldn't be a political question at all. On Sunday, Robert Pear reported in the New York Times that Medicare will now pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling as part of seniors' annual physicals. A similar provision was originally included in ObamaCare, but Democrats stripped it out amid the death panel furor. Now Medicare will enact the same policy through regulation. We hadn't heard about...

Sarah Palin deserves an apology. When she said that the new health-care law would lead to "death panels" deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed. Now we learn, courtesy of one of the ridiculers -- the New York Times -- that she was right. Under a new policy not included in the law for fear the administration's real end-of-life game would be exposed, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calls for the government to pay doctors to advise patients...

New end-of-life care policy is an update of Bush regulations. Advocating end-of-life care planning does not equal end-of-life advocacy. That critical distinction is deliberately buried by irresponsible health care reform opponents in the long, ludicrous debate over nonexistent "death panels.'' This ugly discourse is shamefully flaring anew with a recent New York Times story detailing a new Obama administration policy to reimburse health care providers who advise Medicare patients on advance care planning during an annual wellness exam. Those recklessly claiming that "death panels are back" are at best ill-informed and at worst are engaging in prevarication. The planning is...

I’m going to take the death panel end-of-life planning conundrum down one point at a time to make this very clear for Americans to understand what the Pelosi-led Democrats have done to your healthcare and their attempt to take cover under a Bush-era law–the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008. The Hill reported that the Obama White House attempted to calm Americans’ fears of the dreaded death panels: The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans...

When a politician tells you he wants to give you something for “free,” he really means it will be rationed. The currency of the State is compulsion – it has no other resource. Its money is extracted from taxpayers by force. Its mandates are implemented by force. The use of force to control distribution of a limited resource is rationing. It can be prettied up with flowery language and high minded promises - and of course a stiff measure of hatred for those who resist having their resources taken away to fulfill the promises of the State - but its...