Governor Palin's Crazed Health Care Rant Blame the Washington Post

Governor Palin's Crazed Health Care Rant Blame the Washington Post
As a basic rule, politicians will say anything they can get away with. If an effective politician thinks that he can call his opponent a drug-dealing, serial-murdering gangster, and have the charge taken seriously by the media, then he will do it, even if there is no reality whatsoever to the allegation. The reason that most politicians don't describe their opponents this way is because the media will denounce them as liars, who are unfit for responsible public office.

This basic truth must be kept in mind in understanding the health care debate. The debate has trailed off into loon tune land, and it's the media's fault.

The lunacy was most clearly in evidence in former Gov. Sarah Palin's claim that President Obama's plan would force her to stand in front of a "death panel" to argue for the life of her baby with Down Syndrome. This "death panel" is a complete invention by Governor Palin. There is no twist or turn or contorted permutation of President Obama's plan that would prevent Ms. Palin from providing as much health care as she wants to her baby.

It would have made as much sense to claim that the transportation bill will deny medical care to her baby. After all, if the roads in front of her home are not properly maintained, and her baby has a medical emergency, then the transportation bill would have effectively sentenced her baby to death because she won't be able to get medical attention in a timely manner.

The reason that Governor Palin thought she could make up stories about President Obama's death panels is that the media have treated all sorts of other absurd inventions about his health care plan with respect. At the most basic level, opponents have repeatedly said that President Obama's plan will lead to rationing of health care.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing in President Obama's plan that resembles rationing. He certainly intends to limit the type of medical procedures that the government would fund, but opponents of the plan don't want the government to fund any procedures. So, how is restricting the procedures funded through a government plan rationing? Anyone who wants to is entirely free to buy as much health care as they want outside of the government-subsidized plan. Where is the rationing?

Using Governor Palin's story, there may be mothers who are less wealthy than her who will be able to care for a baby with Down Syndrome or other serious affliction as a result of President Obama's plan. These mothers might not otherwise have this option because they could not afford the health care. It is easy to see how President Obama's plan can lead to life compared with the current situation. It's virtually impossible to see how it leads to death.

The media have allowed the politicians to turn life into death and night into day when it comes to the health care debate because they decided that anything said against President Obama's plan should be treated with respect, no matter how absurd it might be.

The line about rationing isn't the only place where the media have fallen down on the job in the health care debate. Instead of telling us that the cost of the plan was "huge," as the have often done, the media could have put the cost in a context that would make it understandable to people who are not policy wonks. They could have told us that the projected $1 trillion cost over the next decade is equal to about 0.5 percent of GDP, less than half of the cost of Iraq-Afghanistan wars at their peak.

The $250 billion ten-year shortfall that Congress is struggling to fill is a bit more than 0.1 percent of GDP, rounding error in the total budget. But the media only assured the public that this gap was a big hole in the budget; they didn't try to tell us how big.

The media have the job of informing the public. They have the time and the resources to know that when opponents of President Obama's plan talk about rationing, they are not telling the truth (i.e. they are lying). If the media just pass these assertions on to the public without comment, then they are giving them credibility.

And if the opponents of health reform think they can get away with one really big lie, then why shouldn't they start moving forward with even bigger ones. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with Governor Palin's death panel line. For this we owe our thanks to The Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media.

How The Right Turned The Heath Care Town Halls Into Media Circuses And Teabagger Sessions

How The Right Turned The Heath Care Town Halls Into Media Circuses And Teabagger Sessions

The leaders of the angry mob are reveling in this and have learned their lessons well. They are the victims of Hoyer and Pelosi and Obama-Hitler and the dupes with the tri-corner hats insist no insurance companies are paying them to walk around telling and screaming. No doubt. They say they're just ordinary Americans and they resent being called "tools" and "angry mobs." They love being victims though; that's their natural comfort zone. Harry Reid's frustration-laden comments about evil-mongers plays right into their hands. Are, as he claimed, "lies, innuendo and rumor," being used to drown out rational debate? Well, of course; that's the whole fucking idea. But the dupes in the tri-corner hats don't know that. They don't know they're being used by the insurance CEOs-- who they will tell you they actually hate! Brian Baird's (D-WA) town hall meeting was disrupted by a gang of teabaggers whose goal was simple: disruption. He gave them a bonus when he said they were “lynch mob mentality” and exhibiting quasi "Brownshirt tactics." Now they can whine about how they're being victimized by elites. And, of course, this is manna from Heaven for the mass media-- and not just for the GOP's own Fox News but also for relatively legitimate media like CNBC, which was caught yesterday trying to drum up a riot with some of the teabagger groups for their TV cameras. And now they can whine that the fascist secret police are arresting them for exercizing their constitutional rights.

Conservative media ignore their own long history of invoking Nazis to smear progressives
Numerous media conservatives have misrepresented House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments that protesters are "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care" to express outrage that she would call the protesters "Nazis" -- even though she didn't. However, their outrage rings hollow -- the conservative media frequently invoke Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to smear the Obama administration, Democratic officials, and progressive policies, and such rhetoric has escalated in the past few days, largely due to Rush Limbaugh.
Conservative media falsely claim Pelosi asserted or suggested that health care reform opponents are "Nazis"

Following Limbaugh's lead, numerous media figures have advanced this false claim. After host Rush Limbaugh said August 6 that Pelosi is "basically saying that we are Nazis. She is saying that the people who oppose this are Nazis, and I'm going to tell you what," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Fox News' Gregg Jarrett, and The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan and James Taranto falsely claimed or suggested that Pelosi called health reform opponents "Nazis."

In fact, Pelosi said protesters were "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care." Speaking to reporters, Pelosi was asked if she thought there was "legitimate grassroots opposition" at recent town hall events. She responded: "I think they're astroturf; you be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."

Some in the media also accused Pelosi of lying for saying protesters were "carrying swastikas" -- but they were. Numerous conservative outlets and figures, including The Washington Times, Andrew Breitbart, and The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore asserted or suggested that Pelosi was lying. But swastikas have appeared at town hall meetings. Indeed, as Media Matters for America senior fellow Eric Boehlert and Fox News contributor Alan Colmes have noted, multiple protesters at health care reform protests have held signs featuring swastikas.
Limbaugh has ratcheted up Nazi rhetoric to new levels in recent days

In the past week, Limbaugh has made comparisons of the Obama administration and Democrats to Hitler and the Nazis with alarming frequency. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks responded to one such comparison by stating: "What he's saying is insane."

Here are some recent examples of Limbaugh's obsession with Nazi comparisons:

* August 6: Limbaugh: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate"

* August 6: Limbaugh: "[T]he Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo"

* August 6: Limbaugh discusses "the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany"

* August 6: Limbaugh claims Obama "sending out his brownshirts"

* August 7: Limbaugh again says Obama health care logo "looks damn like the Nazi logo," lashes out at reporters mentioning comment

* August 7: Limbaugh falsely suggests that Obama believed "eight years ago," the American court system was "Nazi-like"

* August 7: Limbaugh again refers to "similarities" between Dem Party leaders, "Nazi Party of Germany"; adds Pelosi "started it"

* August 10: Limbaugh explaining his Nazi reference: "Socialism is socialism," "Hitler, Lenin, Stalin were all men of the left"

Michelle Malkin So Desperate to Stop Healthcare Reform She is Demonizing Children

Michelle Malkin So Desperate to Stop Healthcare Reform She is Demonizing Children
Wasn't Malkin's infamous, and creepy, 2007 Baltimore drive-by* bad enough? I guess not, because now Malkin's zeroing in on a young Massachusetts school girl. Why? Because she got to ask president Obama a question at a town hall forum. Bad idea! (She was an "in-the-tank questioner.") The girl may as well have painted a bull's eye on her back because Malkin and her online detective pals are takin' that kid down!!

Stay classy, Michelle.

And how much hate mail and how many angry phone calls to the house from wingnuts do you think the little girls' family is now going to receive thanks to Malkin's vilification? And all because the youngster participated in a town hall forum.

Malkin's larger point seemed to be that the Obama town hall wasn't diverse enough, and that too many Obama fans were in attendance. (i.e. It was all staged.) As HotAirPundit complained, "During the Town Hall at the end of Obama's speech nearly everyone gave Obama a standing ovation, on their feet clapping. This is propaganda 101."

Here's the friendly wager: If any reader can find a single example of Malkin or HotAirPundit ever leveling similarly pointed criticism of President Bush's town hall forums during his 2005 push to privatize Social Security -- town hall forums where Democrats were purposefully shut out or were even physically removed on the suspicion that they might disagree with the president -- then I'll send that reader a complimentary Media Matters bumper sticker.

But I'm not concerned about losing the wager because Malkin and HotAirPundit specialize in advertising their hypocrisy.

*I'm not using the "drive-by" phrase metaphorically the way Rush Limbaugh does. I'm using it literally. In 2007, Malkin drove all the way to Baltimore and cruised by the row house of a working class family -- she practically peered in their windows -- in an effort to undermine their public support for a federal insurance program designed to help poor kids.

What Really Happens When You Demand the President Produce His Birth Certificate

What Really Happens When You Demand the President Produce His Birth Certificate

One of the citizens starts showing him documents. "This is clearly his school record that shows that he was a citizen of Indonesia..."

"I don't understand what that has to do with the Kentucky attorney general's office," Wilding repeated.

"He was on the ballot here in Kentucky," Taitz said.

"That was a federal election. There are federal-election laws. The FBI investigates those. So I believe that your best venue and jurisdiction lies with the U.S. district court and the FBI."

That's when Taitz lost it. "I can see that you are hell-bent on doing absolutely nothing," she said, eyes flaring. "You want to pass the buck."

"No ma'am. I'm trying to follow the law."

"I'm going to the FBI and not only reporting Obama, I'm going to report you for refusing to investigate crimes. You have a duty to investigate those crimes! Why are people paying salary for this whole office of attorney general of Kentucky? To do nothing?"

"I think we're finished," Foster said.

But Taitz wasn't finished. She marched her troops straight over to the secretary of state's office and did the exact same presentation all over again. Then she headed to the FBI to do it a third time. And the whole time, she never stopped talking:

Goldman Sachs runs the treasury.

Obama is a puppet.

There's a cemetery somewhere in Arizona where they just dug 30,000 fresh graves, which wait now for the revolution.

Baxter International — a major Obama contributor — developed a vaccine for bird flu that actually kills people.

Google Congressman Alcee Hastings and House Bill 684 and you'll see that they're planning at least six civilian labor camps.

Google an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about train cars with shackles.

The communist dictator Hugo Chavez way back in 2004 purchased the Sequoia software that runs our voting machines and the mainstream media won't report any of it — not even Fox because Saudi Arabia bought a percentage of Fox in 2007.

This is the stuff that the media never gives Taitz a chance to say because it's so focused on the news hook of the "birther" issue. (And, believe me, this has been merely a tiny sample of what I saw on my road trip this spring.) But this is the stuff that reveals who she really is, and what this movement really is. It's no coincidence, for example, that when Bernard Goldberg told Bill O'Reilly that the real force pushing the birth certificate controversy was Obama, he used the exact same language as Taitz:

But like I said — and this is important to emphasize — all of Taitz's followers seemed like very nice people. Even Taitz had her good side on the rare occasions when she stopped talking for long enough that it could come out. I saw it when she talked about her three sons, or joked about how glad her husband was to get her out of the house. But there was fear and sadness in all of the "birthers," and a sense that things were surely coming to an end. And they were willing to believe anything bad that anybody said about Obama, no matter how or implausible or unfair.

It was pus exploding from a wound.

Can Common Sense Overcome Questions about Obama's health care reform plan

Can Common Sense Overcome Questions about Obama's health care reform plan
his summer the top conversational piece on the tip of everyone's tongue revolves around health care reform. The debate rages on through a series of Town Hall-style meetings taking place around the country with President Obama.

When cutting to the heart of all the hoopla, specific questions emerge. Here's a quick glance at Obama's answers to the most common inquiries voiced by folks just like you:


* What if I already have health insurance and am satisfied with my coverage?

Simply put, things won't change much for those content with their existing, employer-provided health insurance coverage. Obama guarantees that you will be able to keep your doctor and your plan. Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Washington.

* What if I don't have health insurance?

For the staggering 46 million Americans lacking healthcare coverage, the uninsured will have the opportunity to select a plan from a menu of private and public options --similar to the way members of Congress choose their coverage.

Obama's team is working on the creation of the Health Insurance Exchange, which will give people a one-stop shop for a health care plan where they can compare benefits and prices and choose the plan best suited for them. Every plan would include an affordable, benefits package.

Obama also promises to provide assistance to those unable to afford one of the plans. Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Wisconsin.

* Can I still obtain health insurance with a preexisting medical condition?

Yes! Obama often recounts his mother fighting with insurance companies over medical bills after her cancer diagnosis when they suggested it was a preexisting medical condition. Obama vows to put an end to this practice in addition to stopping insurance companies from dropping people if they "get too sick." Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Washington.

* How will my Medicare benefits be affected?

Obama denies any reduction in Medicare benefits. What will change is the wasteful spending associated with Medicare such as the $100 billion in subsidies that go to insurance companies without improving care for seniors.

In addition, Obama says the pharmaceutical industry agreed to $80 billion in spending reductions to help close the "doughnut hole" for seniors falling under Medicaid's prescription drug plan.

The "doughnut hole" refers to the gap in drug reimbursement seniors face that can accrue into thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses. Read the full transcript from Obama's town hall meeting in Ohio.

* How will we pay for this sweeping health care reform?

Obama says his plan will cost $950 billion over a ten-year period. Two-thirds of the cost of reform will come from reallocating money, paid for by taxpayers, already in the system that isn't being spent wisely.

One-third of that price-tag will be covered by increased revenues, such as capping itemized deductions the wealthiest Americans use on their income tax returns. Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Virginia.

**I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson

Republicans Adopt Thuggish Mob Tactics to Cut Off Health-care Debate

Limbaugh: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate" (VIDEO)

Five right-wing myths about healthcare reform, and the facts
Myth 1: Democrats want to kill your grandmother. This claim seems too outlandish on its face to get much traction, but Republicans actually made some headway on it recently. Two House GOP leaders put out a statement warning that the healthcare reform bill "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia." To hear opponents of reform talk about it, the legislation would force seniors to go in for sessions once every five years -- and more frequently if they're sick -- where doctors will encourage them to end their lives. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., summarized the scare tactic pretty well on the House floor last week, when she said the bill would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government," and therefore, wouldn't be pro-life. The GOP has pushed this line especially hard with some of the conservative groups behind the government's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case a few years ago, hoping to get antiabortion allies on board fighting reform. "Can you imagine the response of the American people when they find this out?" one-time GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson asked about the alleged euthanasia scheme on his radio show last month. "They're going to counsel you on preparing you to die," Rush Limbaugh pronounced a few weeks ago. Proof of how far this attack has spread came last week, when a caller to an AARP forum asked Obama about it directly. (Probably unwisely, the president tried to make light of the question, saying there weren't enough government employees to go meet with old people to talk about end-of-life care.)

There is a kernel of truth at the root of this attack: The legislation would order Medicare to pay for consultations between patients and doctors on end-of-life decisions, which it currently doesn't cover. But the consultations wouldn't be mandatory; if your grandmother doesn't want to go talk to her doctor about end-of-life care, she won't have to. Because Medicare doesn't pay for this kind of planning now, only 40 percent of seniors who depend on the government insurance say they have an advance directive that tells healthcare providers what measures they do and don't want used to prolong their life, even though 75 percent say they think it's important. The lack of planning actually costs a lot of money. Medicare spends billions and billions of dollars annually on expensive treatment during the last year of a dying patient's life. Without allowing Medicare to pay for end-of-life consultations, it's hard to know whether patients even want to go to such expensive lengths.

THE 4 others at the link

Reports: Glenn Beck fans turn health forum into ‘near riot’

Maddow calls out GOP operatives behind healthcare mobs
And just who are behind these groups?

“The executive director of American Majority’s Minnesota office — ko’inky dink — regional field director for Bush-Cheney ‘04,” began Maddow. “Executive director of their Kansas office would be a former Republican state legislator; executive director of their Oklahoma office, a former Washington, D.C. conservative lobbyist — you know, just your average middle-class Americans.”

Another ‘Recess Rally’ sponsor is The Sam Adams Society, run by “the former executive director of the Illinois State Republican Party,” said Maddow. “Sam Adams Alliance is also led by a former Dow Chemicals engineer who’s also president of the nation’s largest conservative state-level policy think tank…”

Finally, and what Maddow called “the most illustrative of all,” is Americans for Prosperity, run by Art Pope.

“Art Pope. Art Pope,” she said. “Why does that name sound familiar? Oh, right! That’s the headquarters of the North Carolina Republican Party. That building is named after Art Pope because Art Pope is a multi-millionaire far-right activist who’s given the Republican Party in North Carolina so much money over the years that they could think of no grander gesture than to name their headquarters building after him.”

After all, they’re just “average, middle-class Americans” much like yourself, Maddow concluded with a smirk.

Sick for Profit: Stephen Hemsley’s(CEO of UnitedHealth) Millions Come From Your Health


My Night at the Tampa Health Care Town Hall
Shouting as the room was filled to capacity and the others had to wait outside, holding signs like "I can't read, cut taxes" (which made no sense to me at all). When Representatives started coming in, people started shouting "No! No! No! No!" The town hall hadn't even started yet.

One thing I noticed was that many of the Shouters, and I came to call them, came in very organized. Many had 3x5 cards with printed questions. Sheets ofof paper printed out with highlighted text, usually held in the same kind of binder. I'm not sure if they all shopped at the same office depot, but the similarity was eerie.

Rep. Ryan(R) Plan to Make Your Healthcare Worse

Rep. Ryan(R) Plan to Make Your Healthcare Worse
Last week, I co-hosted Carlos Watson's morning news program on MSNBC. In an interview with Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Congressman was combative as he wrongly dismissed Democratic proposals for healthcare reform as "the government taking it over." Ryan claimed he wants to get "everybody insured" and that his Patient's Choice Act would do just that--giving people "the ability...to have a plan just like the one we have here in Congress."

It appears, however, that Ryan is just another conservative cog in what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls "a wall of misinformation."

Just check out the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) new scathing report entitled Coburn-Ryan Health Bill Would Jeopardize Coverage for Many, While Failing To Reduce the Number of Uninsured Significantly. Here's just some of the damage this bill would do:

•fails to make coverage affordable for many low-income people while also eliminating Medicaid coverage for low-income children, parents, and seniors, pushing tens of millions of vulnerable people into the private insurance market
•would cause employers to drop coverage while failing to provide viable alternatives for people who lose that coverage
•allows insurers selling coverage through (optional) exchanges to charge higher premiums for sicker people and exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions for one year
•prohibits exchanges from placing any limit on premiums and cost-sharing amounts
•doesn't set meaningful minimum standards on benefits, or limit deductibles or out-of-pocket costs
•lack of market reforms means that tax credit and low-income subsidy "would almost certainly be insufficient to enable many people who are older, in poorer health, or have special health care needs to purchase affordable coverage"
•low-income people could exhaust subsidy just to pay premiums
•low-income seniors eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare would face substantially higher costs because Medicaid would no longer pay their Medicare premiums and cost-sharing

The CBPP writes, "Overall, the proposal is not likely to do much to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and would make matters worse for many people who currently have coverage."

This might be a case of the health insurance industry getting what it pays for. The Center for Responsive Politics data indicates that the insurance industry is Ryan's top corporate campaign and PAC contributor: he received over $492,000 since he first ran in 1998, including over $210,000 in the 2007-08 and 2009-10 cycles.

Ryan is hailed--like Eric Cantor--by the right-wing as a rising star in the GOP. It seems, however, that when all is said and done he offers only more of the same: a whole lot of talking points that mask cruel outcomes for millions of people in his state and across the nation. Ryan and his conservative colleagues will be out peddling this misinformation during the August recess-- fight back.

Hannity Twists Obama's 2007 Remarks to Demonize Health-Care Reform

Hannity Twists Obama's 2007 Remarks to Demonize Health-Care Reform (Video at Link)

Right-Wingers Are Stirring Up Xenophobia to Swiftboat Health Reform
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Along with death and taxes, a third thing of which one can be certain is that conservative politicians will exploit Americans’ concerns about illegal immigration to rally opposition to any policy that might help ordinary working people.

The specter of unauthorized migrants sucking hungrily from the public teat is a tried-and-true method of turning people against their own interests.

We heard the narrative used to attack the stimulus package, federal aid to needy families, housing assistance and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

Forget about how these measures might impact their constituents -- lawmakers told us they had to oppose them to prevent hard-working Americans from being forced to subsidize foreigners who had broken the law. It fits neatly within the larger right-populist memes that fuel much of the immigration debate -- an out-of-control government that doesn’t only fail to uphold the law, but also, unimaginably, offers benefits to "illegal aliens" that are denied to ordinary Americans.

So it was inevitable that the unsettled and emotionally charged issue of immigration would be used as a cudgel against health reform. And it has -- not only by the usual motley crew of factually challenged pundits and radio hate-jocks, but by a number of conservative lawmakers.

It is nothing short of a Big Lie. The bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee says: "Eligible individuals are citizens or lawfully admitted permanent residents of the U.S." In the House, a section of the Tri-Committee bill titled "NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS," states unequivocally: "Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."

As the saying goes, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Yet the facts haven’t prevented Republicans opposed to Democrats’ health proposals from claiming the opposite to be true.

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., drawled to reporters, "This health care plan, Obamacare, is going to give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance at the cost of taxpayers." Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., came up with the exquisitely moronic talking point, "if you don’t like illegal immigration, then you’re not going to like this bill either." Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, even went so far as to issue a press release falsely claiming that a Congressional Budget Office analysis projected that the House health legislation would cover 5.6 million unauthorized immigrants by 2019.

Of course, the CBO never said any such thing. Because just as the idea that we don’t sink an enormous amount of resources into punishing those who break our immigration laws is patently false, so too is the entire issue of unauthorized immigrants getting Cadillac benefits from the government. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org noted, "illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for federal health programs under current law."

"Kill Granny" Fear mongering and health-care

"Kill Granny" Fear mongering and health-care
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia."

The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.

But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to "kill Granny."

Though the counseling provision is a tiny part of a behemoth bill, the skirmish over end-of-life care, like arguments about abortion coverage, has become a distraction and provided an opening for opponents of the president's broader health-care agenda. At a forum sponsored by the seniors group AARP that was intended to pitch comprehensive reform, Obama was asked about the "rumors." He used the question to promote living wills, noting that he and the first lady have them.

Democratic strategists privately acknowledged that they were hesitant to give extra attention to the issue by refuting the inaccuracies, but they worry that it will further agitate already-skeptical seniors.

The side battle also undercuts what many say is the more fundamental challenge of discussing sensitive, costly societal questions about how to align patient wishes at the end of life with financial realities, for both the family and taxpayers.

"I don't think it's about cutting costs; it's about quality," said Tia Powell, director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics. Pointing to extensive research, she said: "The good news is if you get people in an environment that is of their choosing, where there is support and they have good pain control, it is very likely to extend their life."

Not since 2003, when Congress and President George W. Bush became involved in the case of Terri Schiavo, who lay in a vegetative state in a hospice in Florida, have lawmakers waded into the highly charged subject, said Howard Brody, director of an ethics institute at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

The attacks on talk radio began when Betsy McCaughey, who helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health-care overhaul 16 years ago, told former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) that mandatory counseling sessions with Medicare beneficiaries would "tell them how to end their life sooner" and would teach the elderly how to "decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) said they object to the idea because it "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."

Brody says the proposal to reimburse counseling sessions "is an excellent idea," because too few doctors or adult children know what an elderly person wants, even sometimes when the patient has signed a medical directive.

About one-third of Americans have living wills or a document designating a health-care proxy who would make decisions if they become incapacitated, said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit group that focuses on the rights of the terminally ill. "But it's alarming how rarely they actually get honored because often doctors haven't familiarized themselves with the patient's wishes," she said.

Wesley Smith, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, said Obama's focus on controlling costs and the legalese in the bill have contributed to the confusion. "People fear these counseling sessions will push toward less care because the point is to cut costs," he said. The average cost of care for a chronically ill Medicare patient in the final six months of life is $46,400, according to Dartmouth University data.

The emphasis on cost containment means "you'll end up with denial of care for the elderly," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who also testified against the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Possible abortion coverage and end-of-life care in the health bill will be "a watershed battle for the life community."

In the past two weeks, AARP has fielded a few thousand calls from people who mistakenly think the legislation would require every Medicare recipient to "choose how they want to die," said James Dau, a spokesman for the organization.

Though he is "willing to give the benefit of the doubt" to some who may be confused, Dau complained that the effort to "intentionally distort" the proposal "is just plain cruel to anyone who is forced to make one of these difficult decisions at the end of life."

The American Medical Association, which supports the provision, has received similar inquiries and protests from patients who fear doctors will begin denying care late in life.

"These are important discussions everyone should have when they are healthy and not entering a hospital, so they are fully informed and can make their wishes known," said association President J. James Rohack. "That's not controversial; it's plain, old-fashioned patient-centered care."

After letting the controversy simmer on talk radio and the blogosphere, expecting that it might blow over, Democrats have begun to respond.

The allegations of mandatory counseling and euthanasia "are blatantly false," Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) wrote colleagues. The accusations are "as offensive as they are untrue."