I used to have a friend who would jokingly quote the maxim, "A lie is as good as the truth if you can get anyone to believe it." Funny how I keep thinking of that as I read about this whole "Death Panels" nonsense.
End-of-life Counselling is a very good idea, not only for the government but for the person whose life may be ending soon. If someone wants to make the case against things like Living Wills and Advanced Directives, I wish they'd speak up and make it honestly…but I don't think anyone does.
Newt Gingrich certainly doesn't. As noted here, just a few months ago, he was saying that it "empowers patients and families to control and direct their care." He also noted how much money it would wind up saving our health care system while simultaneously doing better by the folks receiving that care.
Sarah Palin certainly doesn't. In April of '08 as governor or Alaska, she signed a proclamation for a "Healthcare Decisions Day" to note "the need to plan ahead for health care decisions, related to end of life care" and went on to "encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives."
As far as I can tell, no Republican leader does. The 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill which the G.O.P. wrote and passed overwhelmingly contained funding for such counselling.
But we're now in that wonderful realm where you campaign by deliberately misrepresenting the opposition's position. Democrats have sometimes done this by claiming that some G.O.P. proposal would destroy Medicare or Social Security, thereby panicking older voters into shunning it. Some Republican or Insurance Company stooge (not that there's much separation there lately) looked at the Health Care Reform proposals, noticed the same end-of-life counselling provisions and thought, "Hey, we can pass this off as giving the government power to kill your grandparents!"
The Republican leaders spreading this manure don't believe that. In fact, once this country passes whatever kind of Health Care Reforms it winds up passing, there will probably be a bill to reinstate whatever part of the provision gets dropped, and the reinstatement will probably be co-sponsored by Republicans. But right now, folks like Chuck Grassley obviously think it's a dandy way to stall the bill and weaken the parts of it that they really think should be weakened…so they're willing to go along with this lie. And it's a sad fact for everyone that lying seems to be working. That just means there'll be more of it — from everyone.