Where's Waldo?

Who is John Galt? ^ | 09/10/2009 | "John Galt"

[cpurick]

By the way, have you found the death panel in last night's speech yet? It was in there.

[La Lydia]

It is located in Title IV of HR 3200, in the provisions that established the "Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission" to determine what medicine and treatments are effective enough, and, therefore, which the government will allow patients to receive and will allow to be paid for by "private" insurance. These determinations are to be based on the treatment or prescription being economically "effective," depending on whether the patient (or a category of patients) is deemed worth the expense because of age, potential productivity, health, and other factors. It mandates the creation of a commission like the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, which assigns a value to a year of life based on age, existing conditions, etc. If a procedure or treatment exceeds that value, you don't get the medicine, treatment or procedure.

Title IV of the House bill, HR 3200: TITLE IV—QUALITY 11 Subtitle A—Comparative Effectiveness Research SEC. 1401. COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH. (a) IN GENERAL.—title XI of the Social Security Act is amended by adding at the end the following new part: ‘‘PART D—COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH ‘‘COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH ‘‘SEC. 1181. (a) CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH ESTABLISHED....—

You won't even get a personal visit to the "death panel." This commission will determine what treatment you may receive without ever looking at your individual case. Instead, you will be assigned to a cohort or a category, and the applicable limits applied to your care.

[Yo-Yo]

“So the commission can help encourage the adoption of these common-sense best practices by doctors and medical professionals throughout the system — everything from reducing hospital infection rates to encouraging better coordination between teams of doctors.”

[Fredgoblu]

So...this commission will be composed of whom???

The way I see it, Obama appoints another unelected, unvetted commie to act as his Health Care Czar ("commissioner" as they say in HR3200), and this Health Care Czar loads the commission with a groupful of unvetted, unelected Czar-wannabes.

No problem here.

[Foolsgold]

he AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.

What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.

H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.

American Thinker