'Death panels' rumor sways senators

WASHINGTON — A Senate committee has scrapped the part of its health-care bill that has given rise in recent days to fears of government "death panels."

The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of "end-of-life care consultations" with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of health-care legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly."

Grassley, in fact, had fueled the controversy at a town-hall meeting in Winterset, Iowa, on Wednesday, when he told a questioner, "You have every right to fear. ... (You) should not have a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on Grandma."

For Democrats, the decision was an apparent acknowledgment that the provision has become a lightning rod for critics of a proposed overhaul of the health-care system. Democratic lawmakers and President Obama are trying to extend health insurance to more Americans, rein in health costs and make other changes.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has speculated that Obama and other Democrats wanted to set up "death panels" to coerce the elderly and ailing into accepting minimal end-of-life care to reduce health-care costs.

The extent to which the provision and others have been misinterpreted in recent days, notably by angry speakers at town-hall meetings but also by Palin, has surprised longtime advocates of a health-care overhaul.

"I guess what surprised me is the ferocity; it's much stronger than I expected," said John Rother, executive vice president of AARP, which is generally supportive of the health-care plans and repeatedly has declared the "death panel" rumors false. "It's people who are ideologically opposed to Mr. Obama, and this is the opportunity to weaken the president."

In reality, the end-of-life provision was designed to allow Medicare to pay doctors who counsel patients about end-of-life decisions. The consultations would be voluntary and would provide information about living wills, health-care proxies, pain medication and hospice.

The American Medical Association and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization support the provision.

A similar provision remains in legislation passed by three House committees last month. Legislation passed by the Senate's health committee does not include the consultation measure.

Palin's claim about "death panels" was discredited so widely, even by some Republicans, that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of Obama's health-care plan are misinformed.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called attention to comments by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Palin's home state. "It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there's these end-of-life provisions, these death panels," Murkowski told a crowd in Anchorage. "Quite honestly, I'm so offended at that terminology, because it absolutely isn't" in the bill.

Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who co-sponsored the Medicare End-of-Life Planning Act in 2007 and proposed an amendment similar to the House bill's provision during the Senate health committee's markup of its health-care bill, termed Palin's interpretation "nuts" and noted that all 50 states have laws allowing end-of-life directives.

And Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who authored the House provision on end-of-life counseling, said he is astounded that Palin has not tempered her bleak descriptions. "It's deliberate at this point," he said. "If she wasn't deliberately lying at the beginning, she is deliberately allowing a terrible falsehood to be spread with her name."

Palin hasn't always been against end-of-life counseling. As Alaska governor, she signed a proclamation making April 16, 2008, Healthcare Decision Day to promote a statewide effort to provide medical patients with clear, consistent information about advance directives.

Still, almost a week after first using the term "death panels" on her Facebook page, Palin defended her claim Wednesday night with a new posting.

And so Finance Committee members, as they write their version of health-care legislation, decided to remove the provision that appears to be animating the claim.

"The Finance Committee is not discussing end-of-life provisions as part of our health-care-reform negotiations, and such provisions were never a major focus of Finance Committee discussions," the Democratic committee aide said.

Compiled from The Associated Press, McClatchy Newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Seattle Times staff