No, the law will not do this. You answered "Yes, the law will do this." No such panels exist. While early versions of the law did contain provisions that would allow Medicare to reimburse physicians for voluntary discussions with patients about end-of-life, these provisions were dropped from the final legislation.
While death panels is a loaded term, the answer instead refers to "physicians getting reimbursed for talking with their patients about end-of-life decisions" is completely off the subject. Instead we know that the cabinet secretary SebelIus is able to issue whatever decrees she likes without any oversight from Congress. So when the time comes to ration Medicare due to the expulsion in costs that we will face by the doubling of the number of patients then we will get the "directives" issued by her that direct providers not to perform certain operations on the older patients.
|
