{"id":2537,"date":"2010-12-28T13:07:27","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T13:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2537"},"modified":"2010-12-28T13:07:27","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T13:07:27","slug":"avoiding_the_inconvenience_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2537","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding The Inconvenience Of Having Congress Actually Pass Something"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two sources for this article–one is a New York Times<\/a> article posted on December 25th, the other is an article by Thomas Sowell posted at Townhall.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Both articles deal with the Obama Administration’s placing a provision in Medicare that Congress had taken out of the healthcare reform act because it was too controversial.   <\/p>\n

According to the New York Times article:<\/p>\n

\n

“Under the new policy, outlined in a <\/em>Medicare<\/em><\/font><\/a> regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.” <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In theory, discussing end-of-life care with your doctor is a good idea.  It’s in the nuts and bolts where the problems arise.  I do wonder, however, about making end-of-life care part of an annual visit.  According to the New York Times article:<\/p>\n

\n

“The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.” <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The article at Townhall.com reports:<\/p>\n

\n

“Although Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Jay Rockefeller had led an effort by a group of fellow Democrats in Congress to pass Section 1233 of pending Medicare legislation, which would have paid doctors to include “end of life” counselling in their patients’ physical checkups, the Congress as a whole voted to delete that provision.” <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If Congress defeated it, why is it back?  <\/p>\n

The article by Thomas Sowell at Townhall.com concludes:<\/p>\n

\n

“But if law is not a body of rules, what is it? A set of arbitrary fiats by judges, imposing their own vision of “the needs of the times”? Or a set of arbitrary regulations stealthily emerging from within the bowels of a bureaucracy?<\/em><\/p>\n

“Louis Brandeis was another leader of this Progressive era chorus of demands for moving beyond law as rules. He cited “newly arisen social needs” and “a shifting of our longing from legal justice to social justice.” <\/em><\/p>\n

“In other words, judges were encouraged to do an end run around rules, such as those set forth in the Constitution, and around the elected representatives of “we the people.” As Roscoe Pound put it, law should be “in the hands of a progressive and enlightened caste whose conceptions are in advance of the public.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“That is still the vision of the left a hundred years later. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution, by voting out those who promote end runs around it.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The next session of Congress is going to begin with a reading of the U. S. Constitution.  It’s time all members of Congress (and the President) took the Constitution seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two sources for this article–one is a New York Times article posted on December 25th, the other is an article by Thomas Sowell posted at Townhall.com. Both articles deal with the Obama Administration’s placing a provision in Medicare that Congress … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}