Putting to Rest the “Death Panel” Lie

Earlier this month, Medicare issued a proposal to begin paying physicians for the time and work involved in engaging their patients in advance care planning.  If finalized by the agency, the new benefit will be available to physicians and their Medicare patients starting in 2016.

It’s about time!  For many years now, ACP has championed advance care planning and has urged Medicare and other insurers to cover it.  As articulated in our Ethics Manual, “Advance care planning allows a person with decision-making capacity to develop and indicate preferences for care and choose a surrogate to act on his or her behalf in the event that he or she cannot make health care decisions. It allows the patient’s values and circumstances to shape the plan with specific arrangements to ensure implementation of the plan. Physicians should routinely raise advance planning with adult patients with decision-making capacity and encourage them to review their values and preferences with their surrogates and family members. This is often best done in the outpatient setting before an acute crisis.”

Yet when Medicare in 2010 offered to include voluntary advance care planning in the new Medicare wellness exam, it unleashed a fury of criticism that if the government reimbursed doctors for discussing advance care planning with their patients, physicians would then pressure patients to give up on treatment and end their lives—the notorious “death panel” lie about Obamacare.  Because of the partisan backlash, Medicare ended up withdrawing the proposal.

That was then, this is now.  Today, the idea that Medicare should reimburse doctors for advance care planning has bipartisan support.  Even before Medicare issued its new proposed rule, U.S Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Mark R. Warner, D-Va., had introduced legislation designed “to give people with serious illness the freedom to make more informed choices about their care, and the power to have those choices honored” by “creating a Medicare benefit for patient-centered care planning for people with serious illness.”

Now that members of both political parties agree on the wisdom of empowering patients to take control of their own healthcare, perhaps this will also mark the time when the notorious “death panel” falsehood is put to rest, once and for all.

Today’s question: what do you think of Medicare’s proposal to pay for advance care planning?