Senate Finance Committee drops end-of-life provision

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The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial
provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed
healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan
healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it
was derided by conservatives as “death panels” to encourage euthanasia.
“On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard
to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the
complexities of all of these issues and policy options,” Sen. Chuck
Grassley
(R-Iowa) said in a statement. “We dropped end-of-life
provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be
misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”
The Finance Committee is the only congressional committee not to report
out a preliminary healthcare bill before the August congressional
recess, but is expected to unveil its proposal shortly after Labor Day.
Grassley said that bill would hold up better compared to proposals
crafted in the House, which he asserted were “poorly cobbled together.”
“The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled
together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences,
including making taxpayers fund healthcare subsidies for illegal
immigrants,” Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the
end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to “advise
patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care
based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care.
“Maybe others can defend a bill like the Pelosi bill that leaves major issues open to interpretation, but I can’t,” Grassley added.