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For the second day in a row, CBS and ABC did the right thing and filed explainers about details of healthcare reform. CBS' Sharyl Attkisson took on the same topic that Kate Snow picked for ABC's Fact Check on Monday. Does the proposed legislation encourage euthanasia of the elderly in order to reduce end-of-life healthcare costs? Attkisson, like Snow, traced that anxiety to a radio interview last month with Betsy McCaughey, the former Lieutenant Governor of New York State. She claimed that the bill would make it "mandatory" for Medicare patients to attend counseling sessions "that will tell them how to end their life sooner." Attkisson contradicted McCaughey. The sessions would be voluntary; they would discuss "the goals and use of orders for life-sustaining treatment;" and organizations that "promote suicide, assisted suicide or the act of hastening death" would be excluded from funding. Attkisson quoted a Harvard study of the final week of life of terminal cancer patients that contrasted those who had received end-of-life counseling and those who had not. The benefits of counseling were improved comfort, equal longevity and $1,000 less in expense.
ABC's Fact Check had David Wright examine President Barack Obama's prediction about what would happen if healthcare legislation passes: "If you have got health insurance, you keep your plan, you keep your doctor." Wright contradicted the first half of Obama's pledge. Within five years all insurance plans would have to change "to comply with new government standards, for instance, banning discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and prohibiting caps on coverage." As for the second half, about keeping one's physician, "most Americans are perfectly happy with their own doctor" and changing insurers does "not necessarily" mean changing doctors. "The facts are that the bill includes tax breaks and mandates designed to prevent a mass exodus from the current employer-based system."
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