Posted on 08/16/2009 11:08:02 AM PDT by Maelstorm
As a physician I have talked with people about how they want to be treated at the end of their lives. If they knew they were dying, how much would they want done? Would they want to be at home or at a hospital or in a nursing or hospice facility? How much chemotherapy, resuscitation, diagnostic tests, feeding tubes, etc., would they want? At some point would they just want to be kept from suffering?
I also want to be able to have this sort of conversation for myself. I want eventually to be allowed to die with dignity and peace and without a great deal of medical intervention intended just to forestall death for a few more days or weeks. Some of these things need to be decided before the fact; otherwise medical personnel may be required to give us a lot more “treatment” than we might want.
This sort of discussion is what is included in the current House version of health insurance reform, and it is a far cry from the notion of “death panels” that ex-Gov. Palin and others are screeching about in a cynical and manipulative way. I look forward to the day when we the people no longer tolerate extremist politics and instead demand the kind of rational debate a true democracy requires. We can’t afford to let health care reform be derailed by this sort of divisive foolishness.
-Dr. Joe Douglas
200 Maine Street Suite A Lawrence, KS 66044
(785) 843-9192
http://www.bertnash.org/index.html
August 16, 2009
No one opposes people making decisions on how they want end of life handled. What we do oppose is making it mandatory that people forced into counseling to encourage them to choose death or as it would become in such a system "an encouraged choice" or "the reasonable choice".
Just recently my Wife's grandmother who is in her late 70s had an incident when she was switched from pills that she took to control her sugar to insulin injections, her kidney's failed, her liver failed, Doctors didn't expect her to live through the next day. Well she didn't die and though some were ready to just pull the plug because she was old and suffering. She was aware enough to agree to be put on a respirator temporarily. Luckily the person with medical power of attorney felt the need to ask her what she wanted.
Today her liver has fully recovered and her kidneys are recovering, the doctors on revaluation of her medication found she no longer needed half of it. She is off the respirator and well on her road to being her old self. If a government system had been in control of administering her wishes I believe she would now be dead rather than talking on the phone with her 2 year old grandson Jason as she was yesterday.
All of us have encountered blind bureaucracy. Do we want to turn our lives and those we love over to such a system?
This guy needs his head examined.
This guy is basically taking the position that anyone who disagrees with him is irrational. Of course the fact that he is the one wanting to nationalize a huge portion of the economy doesn’t indicate extremism on his part. Oh no, never.
....Psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate among doctors and doctors have a higher rate than the public at large.
It’s called a “Living Will”. Why do I need a government official for these decisions??? Just WHO ARE the extremists here, Doc???
America has tolerated extremist politics since at least the 1930s, if not longer. Still waiting for the voters to reject socialist extremism and return to Constitutional normalcy. Not holding my breath.
with the rationing heaped on ahead of this “discussion”, there will surely be less options than this guy pretends
No surprise. Lawrence, Kansas, as far as radical left wing politics go, could be called Berkley East.
I look forward to when there are no more communists/liberals/socialists/fascists (they’re all the same) and mooslum terrorists.
The members of the American Psychological community of the 20’s and 30’s were the architechs of the National Socialist Policies made reality in Germany.
For this JO shrink:
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
Winston Churchill
I wonder if this has increased through the last part of the 20th century, as they have been given more power to RUIN peoples lives?
If you don't want to fight then that is up to you, Doc. Just don't have government paid doctors pushing it as the preferred option. I want to be hooked up to every expensive machine possible to keep me alive. I want a squad of Marines at my bedside to lay down suppressive fire if the Grim Reaper shows up in person, or more likely if a doctor tries to unplug some life support equipment. I want specialists flown in from the four corners of the world to fight death every step of the way.
I hear far too many stories of people who doctors tell are done for except for cutting off the life support who end up making a full recovery to want to give up too early.
>>”it is a far cry from the notion of “death panels” that ex-Gov. Palin and others are screeching about in a cynical and manipulative way.”
The word “screeching” takes this out of the arena of professional discourse, and into the realm of “propaganda.”
DG
As a little follow on, I have been reconsidering my organ donor selection on my driver’s license. Far too many of the organs are useless if they wait until you are “100%, blood not flowing” dead before taking them, so the transplant doctors are a little quick on the trigger to get the organs while your heart is still beating. They make the utilitarian decision of taking necessary organs from one person who probably won’t survive for the next few hours to give/sell (little difference considering the price the medical system charges for organ removal/transport/implant) to someone who might not survive without them.
Trig Palin would not be affected by the end-of-life panels for some years, but would be effected immediately if Downs Syndrome patients are put in a class where it's not considered economically efficient to do much more than prescribe aspirin.
The Death Panels include that panel that decides that 100 (or whatever number) is the right number of cardiac patients to handle in a given area, and the 101st should just take aspirin and wait.
By deciding how many should live, they are deciding how many should die.
How many times do we have to say this. The Death Panels are not the discussion between the doctor and the patient about long term options. The Death Panels are the Washington bureaucrats who will decide how many angioplasties, MRIs, hip replacements, etc. will be allowed in a fiscal year and how they will be distributed. Tough luck if the quota for angioplasties runs out in April and you have to wait until the next fiscal year starts in October before you're treated. Hope you don't die in the interim (or maybe hope you do die to clear the backlog).
On the other side, we pretty much have to stop them from breeding.
Notice the pure fabrication this putz attributes to Palin and various other Rs. Palin and the opposition in general are intent on retaining what little free market health care exists. That's the only marketplace that allows the choice this putz says the Rs are attempting to take. This fabrication is intended to fool folks into believing their lower level of care is appropriate and that all should be required to support it w/o objection and with whatever reasources and treasures are demanded of them.
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