The controversial “end of life” counseling provision in the universal health care bill has been dropped competely. The House version of the health care bill allowed Medicare to reimburse doctors for voluntarily counseling the elderly on end of life issues (such as euthanasia) as an alternative to surgery and expensive treatments that might prolong their lives.

The provision caused a furor among the elderly and their family members who packed town hall meetings in their districts. Barack Obama added fuel to the fire when he blamed the elderly for the soaring costs of health care and questioned the “difficult moral issues” of expensive therapy and treatments for the elderly and terminally ill.

Obama’s own grandmother underwent a hip replacement procedure shortly before she died of cancer because her dislocated hip caused her so much pain. But Obama indicated the procedure should not be covered under Medicare when he said, “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”

He added, “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”

Currently, family members of patients who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness are already counseled on Advanced Directives or Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders, which is a written order by a doctor that requires medical personnel to refrain from performing unnecessary procedures (such as CPR) to prolong a patient’s life in the event of a cardiac or respiratory arrest.

But in the House version of the health care bill, the end of life counseling would be provided to patients who were not terminally ill or hospitalized, and critics felt it would lead to so-called “death panels” and talks of euthanasia.

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