Excellent find and I certainly don't want to demoralize of minimize the importance of pointing these thigns out, but it just proves that what the
talking heads say means absolutely nothing. Nothing very new here.
You would think that if Republicans wanted to totally mischaracterize a health care provision and demagogue it like nobody's business, they would at least pick something that the vast majority of them hadn't already voted for just a few years earlier. Because that's not just shameless, it's stupid.
Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators? Anyone want to guess what it provided funding for? Did you say counseling for end-of-life issues and care? Ding ding ding!!
Let's go to the bill text, shall we? "The covered services are: evaluating the beneficiary's need for pain and symptom management, including the individual's need for hospice care; counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and advising the beneficiary regarding advanced care planning."
Grassley told a Panora, Iowa crowd on Wednesday that end-of-life planning “ought to be done within the family and considered a religious and ethical issue and not something that politicians deal with.”
Except that in 2005, Grassley supported government intervention in the case of Terri Shiavo. I'm sure you remember that case. Shiavo was a Florida woman who had suffered brain injuries and had been in a vegetative state for 15 years. Why was it OK for politicians to "deal with" that case?