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Care at the end: Complementary goals

After rumors circulated that President Obama’s health-care reform would institute “death panels” for the elderly, Congress quickly abandoned any effort to address end-of-life issues in health-care legislation. It didn’t matter that the rumor-mongering reflected a willful distortion of section 1233 of a House bill that would have let Medicare reimburse physicians for helping patients develop a plan for end-of-life care.