WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Has Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley saved or scuttled President Barack Obama's health-care reform?

Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a crucial swing vote, announced Thursday that he was killing the so-called "death panel" provision in the health-care reform bill. See full story.

That section of the bill would have required that the government pay for patients -- if they wish -- to talk to their doctor about what kind of care they want at the end of their lives, including information about living wills. Republican opponents of reform had latched onto the provision, arguing as Sarah Palin did, that the bill mandated euthanasia of the elderly, the sick and the lame.

Every independent fact-checker has concluded that the section would do no such thing, but would merely give patients the right and ability to control their own care. It specifically prohibited spending any government money for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. But that didn't stop the "death panel" controversy from overwhelming the reasonable debate about whether this bill is the best bill.

Grassley, normally a moderate voice who rarely kowtows to the far right of his party, endorsed the "death panel" view of the bill at a town hall meeting on Wednesday, saying "We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

On Thursday, Grassley said he'd removed the provision completely from the bill. Grassley has the power to do that because the White House and the Senate Democrats have said they want a "bipartisan" bill, and Grassley's vote is absolutely required to get a "bipartisan" bill through the Finance Committee.

It could be that Grassley has done Obama and the country a big favor by removing the provision, thus allowing the debate to get back to what's really important: How to best make sure that all Americans have adequate and affordable health care.

Or it may be that Grassley has simply given up on the bill, knowing that his political future as a senator from Iowa depends more on blocking a primary challenge from the right than it does on crafting sensible legislation.

There's a third, even sadder, possibility: Grassley's feelings may be hurt by the fact that a Democratic Party with 60 senators just don't need him as much as a Democratic Party with 50 senators does.

-- Rex Nutting, Washington bureau chief