brandondawson.org

Here’s Senator Charles Grassley, R-IOWA, on the “end of life counseling” provisions being proposed:

“There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.“

(Emphasis added is mine.)

And here was Grassley today, on the same topic:

We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.

(press release link)

You’ve got to love the way he’s helped fuel the misconceptions regarding end-of-life planning with one side of his mouth, while protesting that he removed it because of those very same misconceptions out of the other side.

In other news, Chuck Grassley has taken in more than $2 million in donations from the health care and insurance industries since 2003. The National Coalition on Health Care, meanwhile, estimates that 22,000 people die each year from being uninsured or underinsured. That’s 154,000 people in the same timeframe as Grassley’s donations.

That puts the cost to the insurance companies of buying Grassley’s vote at a low, low $13 per head.

Who’s the real Death Panel, Chuck? Evidently, you are.

CORRECTION: Grassley is Iowa’s senior senator, in office since 1981. Tom Harkin, the junior senator from Iowa, has been in office since 1984.