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Sen. Specter Calling for Hearings into End of Life Guide for Vets The Department of Veterans Affairs is under increasing scrutiny this week after it was revealed a controversial end of life counseling pamphlet may be revived and distributed to veterans. The guide called "Your Life, Your Choices," was originally suspended under the Bush Administration, but it is apparently being brought back by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Jim Towey, a former Bush Administration official, brought the revival to national prominence this week with an article in the Wall Street Journal, which outlined his criticisms of the booklet. When asked...

Senator McCain in an interview with George Stephanopolis this morning supported Sarah Panel's concern over the end of life provisions in the Democratic health bills.

A prominent senator on the Veterans' Affairs Committee on Sunday called for hearings to scrutinize and consider suspending a guide for veterans' end-of-life care which one former Bush official says sends a "hurry-up-and-die" message to troops. The guide, called "Your Life, Your Choices," was suspended under the Bush administration but has been revived under the current Department of Veterans Affairs. Jim Towey, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, told "FOX News Sunday" that the pamphlet makes injured veterans feel like a burden, encourages the severely injured to die and should be tossed out. Asked about the...

August 21, 2009 01:10 PM EDT Wallace Unplugged: End-of-Life Counseling "Wallace Unplugged" on the real story behind Veterans' health care and end-of-life counseling. ... This Week on Fox News Sunday: (8/23/09) Amid charges of "Death Panels", Chris Wallace uncovers explosive new information about a "death book", already being used by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, that encourages the nations' veterans to pull the plug. This Sunday we’ll take a look at how this controversial book steers users towards a predetermined outcome from the man who took down the program during the Bush Administration. Plus, we'll bring you a reaction from...

Although President Obama and liberal Congressional Democrats have denounced claims that the health care reform establishes "death panels," it does not help reassure the American public that the nation's foremost pro-euthanasia group is actively pushing "end-of-life counseling" as a centerpiece of health-care reforms. Compassion & Choices, a rebranding of the former Hemlock Society, aggressively lobbies to legalize euthanasia as a "human right" by means of legislation and the judicial system. But the group has revealed that it is a major player behind incorporating a measure (sec. 1233) of the "American Affordable Choices Act of 2009" (HR 3200) that would pay...

Here is video of New York Democrat Rep. Eric Massa talking to Leftist activists at the Netroots Nation Meeting last weekend where he said that Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley had committed an "act of treason" by what he said last week regarding ObamaCare. He appears to be referring to Grassley's pointed remarks that ObamaCare, if adopted, could lead to politicians and bureaucrats injecting themselves into "end of life" decisions that families have to make. Massa also said in conversation to activists at the same meeting that he was prepared to vote for ObamaCare "against the interests of his own district"...

Betsy McCaughey -- an outspoken proponent of the myth that Democrats' health care reform proposals will lead to the creation of "death panels," as well as a former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute -- has stepped down from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp., which bills itself as a "leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market." From a press release: CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN -- News) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a...

LifeNews.com Note: Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of many books, including "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance" (Seven Stories Press, 2003). I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the...

After I posted this last night, many people had more questions about this story. This article is an update that hopefully answers those questions. Please feel free to comment and I can ask the author to clarify if needed.

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care. Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals...

Frustrated liberals have a question for President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers: Isn't it time the other guys gave a little ground on health care? What's the point of a bipartisan bill, they ask, if we're making all the concessions? A case in point: Sen. Charles Grassley, a key Republican negotiator on health care, was on a winning streak as Congress recessed for August, having wrung important concessions from Democrats, including an agreement not to tax employer-provided health insurance and a limit to demands on drug companies. How did Grassley reciprocate? With an attack that struck Democrats as stunning and...

Your local newspaper, as has mine, has likely carried Associated Press stories asserting that the notion of "death panels" has been debunked. Here is a fair-use quote from the lead paragraph of a front-page, above-the-fold, AP story, dated 15 Auguest, by AP writer Liz Sidoti: "he challenged the debunked notion" Google on this phrase or "debunked AND death panels". You will find a large number of media assertions, including some from the AP, simply asserting that the death panel notion has been debunked.

"Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the health care bill... AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many other conservatives is false and misleading. The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the...

....Yes, Canada, England, Europe, China etc all have some form of universal health care. That is great. They also have limitations to a free press, less innovation, bad economies and less freedoms. The United States represents 26% of world GDP. The next largest economy is 1/3 the size of the United States. The United States went from a start up 230 years ago to the most powerful country in the world. Did that happen because of the greatness of our government actions or the greatness of our people? Should the United States follow the path of others, or set the...

Section 1233 would have Medicare pay doctors to counsel seniors on "end-of-life" matters once every five years - or more if the patient's health is dicey. Obama's supporters have forwarded to me links to Politifact.org and FactCheck.org, which have examined Section 1233 [of HR 3200], and conclude nothing sinister is in the bill. Several facts are missing, however. The man who wrote Section 1233, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., advocates euthanasia or, as he calls it on his Web site, "Death with Dignity." In 2005, as the Bush administration challenged Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law, Blumenauer issued a statement criticizing the...

GOP backs away from end-of-life counselingBy BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer Ben Evans, Associated Press Writer – 44 mins ago WASHINGTON – Until last week, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was among the most enthusiastic backers of end-of-life counseling in government health care programs like Medicare. That was before conservatives called it a step toward euthanasia and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin likened the idea to a bureaucratic "death panel" that would decide whether sick people get to live. And even though those claims have been widely discredited, the issue remains a political weapon in the increasingly bitter health care debate....

@ 8:23 am by Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) praised a Senate committee's decision to drop an end-of-life provision from its healthcare reform bill, but continued to pound away at the overall bill — especially a proposal by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. "It's gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress," Palin said in a new note on her Facebook page posted early Friday morning of the Senate Finance Committee's decision to drop end-of-life consultations from its health bill. (The Alaska politician had derided those consultations as "death panels" seeking to aid the euthanasia of...

The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks. Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality. But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite...

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the health-policy adviser at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget -- who has been caricatured by conservatives as a “Dr. Death” seeking to pull the I.V.s out of your grandparents’ arms in the name of cost containment -- is not happy. Asked by ABC News in an interview about the thoroughly discredited claim by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to paint his philosophical writings as evidence -- along with a provision providing optional end of life counseling in the House Democrats’ health care reform bill -- that President Obama wants to set up “death panels”...

Listening to a Fox Radio "News" Break at 5 PM Eastern Time, Shepard Smith refers to the health care end of life provision and states matter of factly the provision spawned "ridiculous references to death panels". In the next breath he reports the provision has been dropped from at least one version of the bill. Well, guess the objections weren't so "ridiculous" then, huh? Just remember Fox News is not a reliable friend of conservatives, certainly Shepard Smith is not. Also makes you wonder about White House attacks on Fox, when even Fox can commit outright bias in favor of...