. . . . about Obamacare’s “death panels”?!?!?

From the Administration’s paper of record:

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare 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.

So, we’re going to have unelected bureaucrats instituting a policy that even an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress rejected (under much duress from the president and its leaders to pass) before being rejected themselves, in part, for passing Obamacare.  

Ed Morrissey unpacks it for us:

There is, however, something at least vaguely disturbing about a government incentivizing doctors to do so as part of an expansive regulatory program that has, as one of its primary goals, cost reduction.  The process used by Obama and Kathleen Sebelius to get this into ObamaCare is more disturbing, and in a very specific way.  Congress made it clear that it didn’t want this incentive as part of the new law.  However, thanks to the miles and miles of ambiguity in the final version of ObamaCare, with its repetitive the Secretary shall determine language, Congress has more or less passed a blank check for regulatory growth to Obama and Sebelius.

Read the whole thing because CPAC’s blogger of the year puts this issue in context and understands why discussions of contingency planning may be necessary.

Citing several studies showing that people “vote with their feet” by leaving states where “big government and big labor are imposing restrictions on efficient employment markets“, Dan Mitchell asks:

If we know that pro-market policies work for states, why does the crowd in Washington push for more statism?

And why isn’t the incoming crowd in Sacramento not seeking to undo the statist policies already in place in the (once-)Golden State?  I mean, California does have the third highest unemployment rate.  

Maybe those statist/pro-union policies have something to do with that? 

(H/t: Instapundit)

With comments like this, seems he’s trying to get his old job back:

JUAN WILLIAMS says that Sarah Palin can’t stand on the same intellectual stage as Barack Obama.

Yeah, but to keep your liberal credentials in good standing, you have to both attack Sarah Palin and FoxNews (while equating George W. Bush with Emperor Palpatine and Dick Cheney with Darth Vader).

As long as Williams maintains his berth on FoxNews, he won’t enjoy the status he once did in left-of-center circles.