Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has again suggested that the health care reform bill will enable an “institute” to be set-up “that determines value of life.”
In other words: Death Panels!
Though the “death panel” meme appeared to have died some time ago, at town hall meeting last week, Grassley revived it just a bit.
He was talking about the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a committee established by the health care reform bill to analyze “comparative effectiveness” of different medical procedures.
Grassley noted that “people fear’ this institute “could be used as in England”:
I suppose it is part of the public health system over there, and I suppose you know it is government run, that determines value of life. And so, it determines value of life for so much. So, if you are 85-years old and presuming it is end of life, your life is not worth as much to spend on a certain procedure as when you are 35-years old. And then, it becomes a tool to determine treatment or not treatment, then for my judgment, that is political interference with the practice of medicine.
At the height of the frenzy over the “death panels” myth last August, Grassley famously said that the American people “have every right to fear” a “government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on Grandma.”
Now, it seems, he’s circling back to that old standby.
[TPM PHOTO FEATURE: THE EVOLUTION OF THE DEATH PANEL MEME]
Grassley’s office could not be reached for comment, but according to the Iowa Independent, Communications Director Jill Kozeny said his “comments were about England’s NICE board,” not health care reform in the U.S.
She added that he was just responding to a question:
The woman’s question was lengthy, really more of a statement, and it included two issues: Â (1) making sure no one rations care for the elderly and (2) how hospitals treat medical records. Sen. Grassley picked an issue to respond to and cited how England rations care and assigns a dollar value to a life to make its assessments. So his answer was a straightforward comment on an issue he was asked about, not more or less than that.
