Written by
A little while ago, I heard a radio program about a guy who was convinced he'd discovered a major flaw in physics theory. A mind-blowing, change-the-world sort of flaw. He thought he'd discovered a miscalculation by Albert Einstein. Energy equals mass times the speed of light, he concluded. Not the square of the speed of light.
He had a devil of a time trying to get anyone in professional academia to review his work - most of them just dismissed him as a crackpot. After all, E=MC² is fundamental to the calculations used in things like atomic bombs. If it was wrong, nuclear explosions would be impossible.
He finally managed to get a physicist to sit down with him, go over his work, and talk about where he'd made mistakes. But there was a problem... This guy would not accept that he'd actually made any. He thought he had reached the right answer, and when the physicist explained that he hadn't, instead of trying to learn to correct his mistakes, he just accused the physicist of being afraid of the "truth" and afraid of what it would mean. In his mind, the academic rejection of his work had become a conspiracy.
He couldn't accept that he was, quite simply, wrong. He hadn't done his research, he had made miscalculations, and wouldn't listen to the one guy who knew enough and was willing to explain it.
Today, in regards to at least one section of the proposed health care bill, I feel like the physicist. I've read Section 1233 in its entirety, and I've read the part of the Social Security Act it would amend. Simply put, it does not establish mandatory end-of-life counseling. It doesn't establish mandatory anything. The section of the Social Security Act it amends is just a list of definitions for services that Medicare will pay for. That's it. All Section 1233 of the health care bill would do is add end-of-life counseling to the list.
Unless you're immortal, you will need end-of-life counseling from your doctor some day. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to worry about paying your doctor at the same time? That's the coverage that Section 1233 adds. The fact-checkers at all the news services - even Fox News - agree on this. There is nothing mandatory whatsoever.
But because the bill is in legalese, because it requires familiarity with the existing law it's amending, and - to be blunt - because reading it is hard, misreading it is easy. Frankly, it's easier, because all you have to do to misread it is fail to read Section 1861 of the Social Security Act. Skip that, and you lose all context. The language inside 1233 becomes devoid of defining parameters such as why these end-of-life counseling sessions are being described at all, and in the absence of knowledge, ignorance is happy to provide a very paranoid answer. End result: Health care forums disrupted by people who are worried grandma will be pressured into committing suicide by her doctor.
Then there is the Health Benefits Advisory Panel, described in Section 123. This establishes a panel of experts to provide recommendations regarding benefits packages. That's it. That's the so-called "Death Panel." Current health insurance companies have similar panels to make the same determinations, the main difference being that health insurance companies also have to ensure that their insurance packages make them a profit. In other words, you have privately owned death panels right now. I don't know about you, but I haven't heard anything about shadowy secret cabals at Blue Cross Blue Shield demanding that babies with health problems be put to death.
When I hear about death panels and mandatory euthanasia counseling, I think of Amateur Physicist Guy (APG). He thinks he's onto something, and doesn't want to hear that he's wrong. He knows about the conspiracy, and he's going to Do Something about it. And if you point out to APG that if he's right, atomic bombs don't work? It doesn't matter. In APG's mind, he's still right.
In this case, APG believes Democrats literally want to kill old people and babies. He will not read the bill to see if it actually says that, because it's too complicated - but also because he's already certain of the truth. Point out that coverage for end-of-life counseling is already available for terminally ill patients under the 2003 Medicare expansion, it doesn't matter. Point out that all the current bill does is expand that availability to people who aren't terminally ill yet, it doesn't matter. Even point out that this wasn't "euthanasia" when the Republican-controlled Congress voted for it in 2003, it still doesn't matter. As far as APG is concerned, the conspiracy is the only real truth.
I guess in the end, I'm asking people not to be Amateur Physicist Guy. I know it's hard, but if you're concerned about a section of the legislation, read it. If it is hard to understand, read it slowly and carefully. If it amends another law, read the part of that law it amends.
Knowledge is power.