Ellen Goodman, former syndicated columnist for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post Writers Group, writes a welcomed obituary for one of the biggest lies of the Obamacare fight: "Death panels." (Thanks, Sarah Palin, for ruining yet another thing.) Death panels were not real, of course. Instead, the provision in the legislation was intended to spur doctors to have discussions with their patients about what they wanted for their end-of-life care by paying for those discussions. Led by Palin (and thanks for that, John McCain), Republicans translated that into "Obama wants doctors to tell grandma when to die," and the provision was stripped from the legislation.
But the idea was reborn this year thanks to efforts by many, including Goodman's "The Conversation Project," a group of healthcare providers, clergy, and media who began meeting in 2010. The group brainstormed over how to talk about dying better in this country, and how to help the people we love die better. That and efforts by many others led to real policy this year.
What now? The new Medicare rules will help encourage and normalize end-of-life conversations. Beginning Friday, doctors and other clinicians will be reimbursed for talking with all their patients—not just sick patients—about end-of-life care. Quietly, in one room after another, in 2016, a talk that almost derailed Obamacare in 2009, will become routine.
A modest payment of $80 or $86 is not in itself going to change the way of death in America. We still need to help clinicians become trained and comfortable as they talk about the D word. We need to be sure that when the time comes the health care system respects those treatment plans—indeed, can even find them. […]
But for the moment, when fact-checking seems like a thankless occupation, and Trump boasts that “Every time things get worse, I do better,” it sure does lift the spirit to deep-six one big fat lie. Death panels: May they rest in, well, peace.
We got here because Obamacare didn't make the sky fall, and in fact seems to be working pretty darned well. No doctor has been forced to kill anyone because of the law, so in retrospect this manufactured panic seems even more ridiculous than it did back in 2010.
We have some distance now from the insane politics surrounding Obamacare. And almost anyone who has had to go through a prolonged and difficult death of a loved one recognizes that the least we can do is encourage discussion about the end of our lives, and exert as much control as we possibly can over our deaths.