Posted on 08/13/2009 2:30:46 AM PDT by Libloather
Sen. Isakson: Health care bill's end-of-life provision not my idea
Georgia senator says Obama wrongly credited him with being part of controversial legislation
By Halimah Abdullah
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — When Sen. Johnny Isakson takes the floor at a meeting at Macon’s Vineville Methodist Church today, he’ll no doubt face tough questions about why President Barack Obama credits the Georgia Republican as the inspiration behind the Democratic health care bills’ end-of-life counseling efforts that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some fellow conservatives call “death panels.”
Both the president and Palin have it all wrong, Isakson said, seeking to distance himself from potentially politically inflammatory associations in this season of hot-tempered town hall debates. After all, just this week staffers of Georgia Rep. David Scott, a moderate Blue Dog Democrat, found a swastika painted outside his Smyrna district office following a particularly heated town hall meeting.
A remark by the president on Tuesday cast Isakson, a staunchly conservative lawmaker from a solidly red state, as an unwitting and unwilling poster child for the administration’s plea for bipartisanship in writing health care legislation.
At a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., Obama sought to respond to what he called “misinformation” coming from critics of his health care efforts, particularly a provision that would allow patients to receive counseling on living wills and end-of-life care.
Palin last week said the provision would create a “death panel” from which Obama’s “bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”
“The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican — then House member, now senator, named Johnny Isakson from Georgia — who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people’s options,” Obama said in Portsmouth.
Not so fast, Isakson said.
“This is what happens when the president and members of Congress don’t read the bills,” Isakson said Tuesday. “The White House and others are merely attempting to deflect attention from the intense negativity caused by their unpopular policies.
“I never consulted with the White House in this process and had no role whatsoever in the House Democrats’ bill,” Isakson said. “I categorically oppose the House bill and find it incredulous that the White House and others would use my amendment as a scapegoat for their misguided policies.”
But in giving the White House wide berth, Isakson, who has long advocated end-of-life counseling and assistance in drafting living wills, points to a nuanced difference between his amendment and a similar House version.
In 2007, Isakson helped spearhead a failed attempt to provide Medicare coverage for an end-of-life planning consultation as part of initial preventive physical examinations. In July, during the Senate committee hearings on the Senate version of the health care bill, Isakson added an amendment that says anyone who participates in the long-term care benefit provided in the bill — if they so choose — may use that benefit to obtain assistance in formulating their own living will and durable power of attorney.
My Senator, Johnny I, and the other Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, talk out of both sides of their mouth all the time. We are used to them clarifying their remarks frequently, that is when we can get Saxby off the golf course.
Every ethnic or “hate” symbol planted anywhere in probably the last ten or more years are hoaxes perpetrated either by the “victim” him or herself or by those who wish to portray the right as hate-filled right wing extremists.
It really is transparent.
You can start right away with THAT particular lie: Scott is a racist, liberal socialist extremist who has never done anything but push his democrat patrons’ buttons from a gerrymandered “safe” district in regional Atlanta, now getting further protected by tens of thousands of illegal aliens squatting in his tenements and slums.
Obama: "I'll see your misinformation and raise it by a pack of LIES".
Did Obama say ANYTHING at all this week that wasn't a flat out LIE??
Dear Johnny,
You are up for re-election next year, if you truly want my vote then earn it. Ask your buddy, Taxme Shameless how much fun he had two years ago, when he was up for re-election.
He probably had someone paint it.
I wonder if the swastika was put there by his supporters...perhaps to divert attention
The democrats will show our senior citizens the same compassion Ted Kennedy had for Mary Jo Kopechne.
Saxby is on the golf course a lot? He must occupy Sam Nunn’s old seat.
isakson is a liar... and you guys need to dump him next year. What good is he?
LLS
“Both the president and Palin have it all wrong, Isakson said”
This is the Johnny Isakson Georgians know well.
No ideas, no original thought, makes decisions with finger in the air, plays both sides, and has no convictions whatsoever (other than being in favor of ending the lives of the innocent).
He is one of the truest examples of good old boy politics I can think of - and he is not even loosely a conservative.
I hope and pray his senate career is nearing an end.
We need Herman Cain to take this senate seat. Come on Mr. Cain, go after this creep!
“We are used to them clarifying their remarks frequently”
How right you are!
Check his hands for paint.
If Isakson is ‘staunchly conservative’ then I am Hillary Clinton.
“”This is the Johnny Isakson Georgians know well.””
Is this article wrong that the language was put in a House bill when Isakson was in the House in 2007? Where is Isakson’s statement wrong? Is he not telling the truth about this? A clause was moved from old House legislation to new House legislation - how is he to blame for that? I thought we were getting a whole new health care bill. Is it being pieced together from hither and yon? Does anyone know?
Isakson is now my Senator but since we are fairly new to GA, we don’t know that much about his record. I do think it’s odd that Boxer and obuma both came out on successive days to point out that the most controversial issue in this legislation was put in by Isakson. Why did that happen and why can’t we find out where all the other provisions came from?
I was commenting on what the article quotes Isakson as saying:
“Both the president and Palin have it all wrong”
I commented: This is the Johnny Isakson Georgians know well. In other words, he is milquetoast and frequently stands in the middle and looks both ways before stepping out, all in an effort to avoid being hit by a political Mack truck.
I really don’t understand how he can’t see what Sarah Palin was saying:
In referring to obama’s death panel, Sarah is not saying they are sentencing someone to the electric chair.
She’s simply saying that the decisions this govt panel (likely ACORN affiliated) will make regarding who is worthy, or not, will result in withholding of care that will lead to the deaths of those who are turned away for whatever arbitrary reasons the czar decides, and the patient will have no recourse. That right there goes against obama's statements that patient/doctor will be making health decisions.
So Sarah is absolutely right. Obama's Death Panel is a fitting title and describes their function in three little words.
IMO Isakson is trying to avoid being labeled with the dreaded partisan label, otherwise he could have said obama is wrong and left it at that. If he finds out most agree with Sarah, look for him to adjust his thinking.
Admittedly, Isakson didn’t get elected with my help, although I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. But now I just want him gone!
You said:
“I do think it’s odd that Boxer and obuma both came out on successive days to point out that the most controversial issue in this legislation was put in by Isakson. Why did that happen and why can’t we find out where all the other provisions came from?”
I can’t answer regarding the other provisions. Regarding what obama said and why:
He is, of course, trying his best to say this bill is bipartisan, while at the same time laying blame by "stretching hte truth", aka lying, and saying that Georgia’s Republican senator was the one who came up with one of the most controversial parts of the bill.
But Isakson is having none of it, which frankly is unlike him. I believe he feels he can speak up this way because public sentiment is against obama.
Your questions: “Where is Isakson’s statement wrong? Is he not telling the truth about this? A clause was moved from old House legislation to new House legislation - how is he to blame for that?”
Statement from Isakson:
http://isakson.senate.gov/press/2009/081109healthcare.html
“Isakson’s amendment to the Senate bill says that anyone who participates in the long-term care benefit provided in the bill – if they so choose – may use that benefit to obtain assistance in formulating their own living will and durable power of attorney.”
You: “I thought we were getting a whole new health care bill. Is it being pieced together from hither and yon? Does anyone know?”
No one knows what’s going on because we do not have the transparency that was promised. I do know this much, paraphrasing Pelosi after the showdown with the blue dogs:
“we will put what we want back into the final bill before sending it to the prez.”
Personally, I wonder what part Zeke Emmanuel had in the writing of this Bill.
If it were discovered that he had ANY real and provable influence in writing this bill, we could destroy it once and for all (given his radical views/paper trail)
Trying again to post link to Isakson’s statement:
http://isakson.senate.gov/press/2009/081109healthcare.html
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