The final curtain (UK Pro-Assisted Suicide Activist)

UK Guardian ^ | 1/28/09 | Mark Gould

[wagglebee]

Assisted suicide overshadows the debate about how we die, but the NHS end of life care champion Keri Thomas tells Mark Gould why making plans for how we want to end our days might prevent impersonal hospital deaths.

So often, the harsh reality is that death can be an ugly, unequal struggle of medicine against mortality. But as national clinical lead for the Gold Standards Framework (GSF) - an NHS-funded project hailed by the government as a vital element of its end of life care strategy - Keri Thomas is determined to ensure that it doesn't have to be so.

The framework has the ambitious aim of ensuring that everyone nearing the end of their life can die in the place they want, receiving the care and treatment of their choice. And there is an even more profound objective: getting British people to stop being afraid of the inevitable and think about death as being a natural part of life, and to plan accordingly.

"We make plans for money, wills and finances, so why not for our deaths?" she says. "If we live in the context of our dying, we can live better."

But euthanasia is in the headlines - from the family of a paralysed young rugby player escaping prosecution for helping him go to a Swiss assisted suicide clinic, and a death at the Dignitas clinic being controversial screened on British TV, to Julie Walters' dramatic portrayal in last Sunday's TV drama of Dr Anne Turner, who in 2006 chose to go to Switzerland to die. So isn't there a danger that the suicide debate overshadows Thomas's role?

[wagglebee]

While the moral case for better end of life planning is clear, there is also a cost incentive for reducing the number of people who die in hospital. "If we do nothing hospitals face a 40% rise in costs over the next 20 years," says Thomas. "But a 10% cut in hospital admissions for patients close to death would save £104m a year."

It's ALWAYS about the money for these ghouls.

[wagglebee]

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[Anvilhead]

Why is it that the American health care system seems to be concerned with how to best keep people alive while the British health care system seems to be concerned with how to best save money?

[ChicagahAl]

"Why is it that the American health care system seems to be concerned with how to best keep people alive while the British health care system seems to be concerned with how to best save money?"

Don't worry. That's about to change. As soon as Daschle is confirmed, we will become like them. Maybe even worse.

[phatus maximus]

Because, to date, we are CITIZENS and not SUBJECTS...for now at least.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Let’s figure it out. Liberals think that the sick elderly should just die - and if they don’t, they should be “helped” to die.
Liberals want totally nationalized health care.
Easy to see the conclusion. When liberals have control over the health care of citizens, ordinary citizens will be “invited” to die and save the system money. There will be a different rule for the Party Elite: they will be given the best of care.

Liberalism is an incurable mental illness.

[castlebrew]

Why is it that these types of ‘activists’ never lead by example....starting now.