Senate Committee Defeats Pro-Life Amendment to Stop Health Care Rationing

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 22, 2009

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Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Senate HELP Committee on Monday defeated a pro-life amendment that would help stop the rationing of health care in the Kennedy restructuring bill. The amendment concerned the section on comparative effectiveness research, which pro-life advocates say prompt euthanasia concerns.

Critics say the section would allow the government to create an arbitrary means to determining when medical treatments are allowed or could receive government funding.

Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, sponsored a pair of amendments to curb the problem but they were defeated during the HELP Committee markup of the Kennedy bill by a party-line vote.

"President Obama promised that under his health reform proposal, every American who had coverage that they liked could keep it. This bill fails to deliver on that promise," Enzi said.

Enzi said the provisions in the bill "provide the government with an unprecedented role in the doctor-patient relationship. Government bureaucracy will end up dictating the treatment that we can and cannot have, and the result will be a delay and a denial of health care services."

Prior to the debate, Sen. Tom Coburn, expressed his support for such an amendment.

He said using the research to decide reimbursements could erode the physician-patient relationship because "government bureaucrats" would be in charge of determining what treatments a patient can receive based solely on cost.

"Medicine is individual, it's personal, it doesn't fit in a box," said Dr. Coburn, a physician.

Burke Balch, the medical ethics director for the National Right to Life Committee talked with LifeNews.com last week about the problems with comparative effectiveness research. Balch says the Kennedy bill would lead to the cutting off of certain treatments that the government doesn't consider cost effective.

He says the bill would employ a system similar to the “quality of life years” system, or QALY, in England where payment for treatment is only authorized if it extends the quality of life not the length of life. Under such a system someone in a wheelchair is determined to have a lower quality of life compared with an able-bodied person.

National Right to Life asked lawmakers to support the Enzi amendment, which would have said the government can't use that system to deny treatment to people on the basis of a disability or degree of medical dependency or quality of life.

Balch says National Right to Life is working with senators on the Senate Finance committee, including pro-life Sen. Charles Grassley, for a similar amendment to the companion bill that panel is crafting.

Amendments on the rationing issue could also come from Enzi or other lawmakers on the Senate floor.

The group is also working to ensure that the health care plan that comes out of Congress doesn't fund abortions or force insurance companies to cover abortions.

NRLC executive director David O’Steen told LifeNews.com last week that the plan will likely cover abortions and not be “up front” about it and that the pro-abortion nature of the plan would be a part of it unless an “overt” amendment is included making it abortion neutral.

ACTION: Go to http://help.senate.gov/About.html to see if either of your senators are on the committee and thank them or complain about their vote for or against the Enzi amendment.

Culture of Death-Who Will Decide For You?

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Terminally ill patients with less than six months to live will soon be able to ask their doctors to prescribe them lethal medication in Washington state.
But even though the "Death with Dignity" law takes effect Thursday, people who might seek the life-ending prescriptions could find their doctors conflicted or not willing to write them.
Many doctors are hesitant to talk publicly about where they stand on the issue, said Dr. Tom Preston, a retired cardiologist and board member of Compassion & Choices, the group that campaigned for and supports the law.
"There are a lot of doctors, who in principle, would approve or don't mind this, but for a lot of social or professional reasons, they don't want to be involved," he said.
But Preston said discussions about end-of-life issues between doctor and patient will increase because of the new law, and he thinks that as time goes on more and more doctors who don't have a religious or philosophical opposition will be open to participating.
"It will be a cultural shift," he said.

A Cultural shift? I won't argue about that. With laws pending that would take away a doctors's moral choice in performing abortions, will they be forced to kill you also? In a nationized health care scenario would your life be worth saving to fit the bottom life of an overburdened, overtaxed system? "Mercy killing?"There is no mercy from a Christian's standpoint of eternal life with eternal consequences. Wesley taught that we should not neglect the poor. I agree. There is a difference between the church giving compassionate care and a government dictated system with humanistic standards. .Something to pray about...keith 1 Cor 13