“Show me where it says end of life counseling is mandatory!”

---said John Stewart to Betsy McCaughey.

Bob Wachter provided a link in the comment thread of Thursday’s post.

The unedited footage, including the off-air segment, is linked here.

Stewart skillfully leveraged jokes, mockery, and audience reactions to out-maneuver McCaughey. How did she do against those odds?

Well, no smoking gun. She did try to establish that the counseling it would be a performance measure and associated with penalties for underperformance. All I could glean for sure was that the counseling provisions would be pay for reporting measures as an extension of Medicare’s PRQI program. If that’s all she’s basing it on she’s making a bit of a leap.

But, again, I wish she’d been given more of a chance to make her points. She didn’t have the home field advantage, and Stewart’s smack down was a little cheap.

Much of the concern about this bill, which I share, is that in its vagueness it leaves a great deal to unelected policy czars whose agenda the public doesn’t trust.