Who’s Afraid of “Death Panels”?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Having cast a mostly symbolic vote to repeal the entire health care law last week, House Republicans have moved on to the next stage of their anti-reform crusade. In my latest story, I explain how GOPers have begun introducing bills to repeal individual parts of the legislation, going after a new Medicare advisory board that they’ve accused of rationing care through a Soviet-style bureaucracy. The GOP has also begun trying to undermine reform through Congressional hearings: on Wednesday, House Republicans grilled Obama administration officials about reform, accusing the law of hampering job creation and casting doubt on the savings that Democrats say that it will achieve.

To a large extent, these moves are largely political: with Democrats still controlling the Senate and White House, it’s highly unlikely that the major parts of the bill will end up being repealed or seriously undermined. At the same time, the Republican provocations aren’t purely symbolic, as some parts of the law are genuinely vulnerable to being undone.

As I explain in my story, bipartisan opposition to the new Medicare advisory board—combined with the revived fear-mongering that it will lead to “death panels”— could lead to its demise during the current Congress. And even the Obama administration has showed itself to be vulnerable to the most pointed political attacks. After the health care bill passed, the White House quietly reinserted a controversial rule that would provide Medicare reimbursements to doctors who provided end-of-life counseling—the catalyst for the original “death panel” attacks.

After The New York Times revealed what the White House had done in December, a conservative uproar about “death panels” came roaring back. Rather than defend the policy, the Obama administration bent to political pressure and killed the rule. The flip-flop suggests that the Republicans may have more power to force the administration to undo other policies that the right has linked to its faulty “death panel” meme than some might have thought.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate