By BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Until last week, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was among the most enthusiastic backers of end-of-life counseling in government health care programs like Medicare.
That was before conservatives called it a step toward euthanasia and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin likened the idea to a bureaucratic "death panel" that would decide whether sick people get to live. And even though those claims have been widely rejected, the issue remains a political weapon in the increasingly bitter health care debate.
Now, Isakson and other Republicans who eagerly backed the idea are distancing themselves from it or lying low in the face of a backlash from the right.
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Just last summer, Congress overwhelmingly approved legislation requiring doctors to discuss the issue with new Medicare enrollees. And the government already requires hospitals and nursing homes to help patients with advance directives or living wills if they want support, under a 1992 law passed under Republican President George H.W. Bush.
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Isakson and other Republicans such as Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Susan Collins of Maine have co-sponsored legislation in recent years promoting the counseling, including in initial Medicare visits and through a proposed government-run insurance program for long-term care.
moreThe
Gallup poll that came out Thursday has been widely described as indicatingthat the health care protests are “working.” This is based on the fact that 34% say the protests make them more sympathetic to the protestors' viewpoints while only 21% say the protests make them less sympathetic.
But both
Nate Silver and
David Axelrod point out that this particular question really doesn’t prove much of anything – people who are already in agreement with the protesters views will naturally tend to express sympathy for demonstrations that support their views. As Silver says:
Polls of this nature, however, are notoriously slippery. If there were some protest in favor of a policy that I supported -- like expanded stem-cell research -- I'd probably tell a pollster that the protest had in fact made me more sympathetic to the cause, even though my mind on the issue was already 100 percent made up and was not going to be swayed. The real question, then, is how many minds are being changed on the issue. And it may not be all that many. Three relevant polls have come out on this subject in August: a Rasmussen poll found some further erosion in support for the bills pending before Congress, but a Gallup poll did not find any further decline in Obama's approval on health care since mid-July. Nor did a CNN poll find any decline in support for the Democrats' health package, although that poll is now about a week old.
Let’s face it, we’re all desperate to try to make use of any data that happen to come our way, but there really isn’t a lot one can deduce from this particular question.
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