Wanted: A backbone

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Score one for hysteria and lies. Score another for lack of backbone, an all-too-common malady that seems to mandate paralysis in this nation on serious problems. And it all portends badly for reason prevailing over fear in the national health care debate.

Lawmakers are declaring dead a provision that would allow health consumers to voluntarily get advice on end-of-life directives. They also are saying that a public health care option is now expendable.

First, the end-of-life directives. Talk to health care experts, and they will tell you that such directives are necessary in making sure that a person’s last days go according to wishes. But this morphed into “death panels” and “pulling the plug on grandma” — fictions thoroughly debunked. And it didn’t matter.

Sensible medical planning

This perfectly reasonable provision would have allowed such visits to be paid for as part of sensible medical planning by consumers. It’s been declared dead on the Senate side by so-called “centrist” GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

This cedes far too much power to the fringe that pushed the lies and emboldens them to Swift-boat any other provision. That so many are willing to believe is a testament to the efficacy of fear-mongering in U.S. politics.

In addition, the Obama administration indicated last weekend that it is willing to forgo a public health care system to drive down prices in the private sector. In our view, this would have had to have been crafted so as not to unfairly compete with the private sector.

But the reluctance to pursue this is not based on the ability or inability to do that but on denying the fringe yet another issue — the merits of the proposal be damned.