Wednesday, August 19, 2009

End of life counseling provision off the table?

Many of the alarmists about the end of life counseling provision in HR 3200 would be satisfied if that small section of the bill, starting on about page 425, were re-written to make the counseling explicitly voluntary. That's what many of them have been clamoring for. So what are they going to do? HHS secretary Sebelius is now saying they'll probably drop it from the bill altogether! As Wesley Smith said, that's strange.

This is exceedingly strange. If the counseling is as important as its supporters have been saying, why not just ensure voluntariness? Why, instead, would the administration rather kill the counseling provision altogether? Maybe they plan to put the provision in by regulation instead of legislation? Inquiring minds want to know.

None of this makes any sense if Section 1233 was truly benign.

No comments: