Blog:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/death_talk_for_seniors.html
September 21, 2009
“Death talk for seniors”
By Rita L. Marker
SNIPPET: “First, the bad news. For the first time since 1975, Social Security recipients are being told they won’t be receiving an annual cost of living increase in their monthly benefits. At the same time, their Medicare premiums will go up, so monthly checks will actually shrink next year. Not to worry, though. Here’s the good news. Seniors may not have to live on such meager funds for long because the government is going to help them plan how they want to die.
This benevolent plan is in Section 1233 (p. 424) of the health care reform bill known as “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” (HR 3200). It didn’t just show up on the doorstep of health care reform, but was packaged and delivered by Compassion & Choices (C & C), the assisted-suicide advocacy group previously known as the Hemlock Society.
Under Section 1233, a doctor would be paid for having an “advance care planning consultation” with a patient. The consultation wouldn’t be mandatory, at least for now. But if the doctor wants to get paid for it, the consultation’s contents are very specifically prescribed. For example, each consultation “shall include” an explanation of legal documents such as living wills and durable powers of attorney, and information about the “continuum of end-of-life services.” Patients need not be ill but, because they are over a certain age, their doctors will suggest that it’s time to talk about death.
So, if George, a healthy 70-year-old marathon runner, goes to the doctor because of tendonitis, his doctor will have the all-important discussion with him, reminding him that he’s not getting any younger and that it’s time to decide how he’ll die. Sure, George may or may not be adversely affected by this. But consider Clara, an 84-year-old widow who needs a hip replacement. If the doctor tells her that the government health plan won’t pay for her surgery but will pay for pain pills, and then tells her it’s really time to discuss her end-of-life options, what message is she getting? Isn’t it likely that Clara will acquiesce, if her doctor suggests that she “choose” to forgo treatment for any future illnesses so she won’t be a burden on her family?
To hear proponents of Section 1233 talk about it, one would think that people have no access now to information about advance directives. But for years, federal law has required that patients be provided with general information about advance directives.
In 1992, Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination Act. It requires every health care organization receiving Medicare or Medicaid funds to do the following: at the time of admission, provide a written summary of a patient’s rights under state law to make health care decisions, including the right to have an advance directive; ask all adults entering for treatment whether they have an existing advance directive; and document the existence of an advance directive in the patient’s medical record.
Cheerleaders for more advance care planning claim that physicians won’t tell their patients about options regarding available treatments and the right to accept or reject them unless they receive reimbursement for doing so. But physicians already have a responsibility to provide that information to patients so they can give or withhold consent to available treatments. This is known as informed consent.
Yet there are calls for more details about end-of-life planning. Perhaps those who are advocating this are unaware that, beginning in 2009, doctors have been required to discuss end-of-life planning, including advance directives, with all Medicare patients at their initial “Welcome to Medicare” physical exam.
With all of these current requirements, isn’t paying doctors to have another talk with grandma just a bit of, shall we say, overkill? Is foisting yet another death planning chat with her really necessary? And what would be part of the compulsory “end-of-life continuum” discussion?”
Blog:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/killing_granny_1.html
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September 21, 2009
“’Killing Granny’”
By Cliff Thier
SNIPPET: “A virulent moral blindness has seized hold of a substantial slice of America’s educated elite. Convinced they know better, they argue for a shallow, illogical, and horrifying vision of people as disposable.
I was wrong last week when I declared that Newsweek’s cover showing a baby next to a headline declaring that we’re all born racist was evidence that the mainstream media had hit bottom and destroyed itself. It was intellectual arrogance on my part that led me to underestimate the determination of Newsweek’s editors to find new deeper bottoms to hit.
This week’s Newsweek cover exceeds the sheer breathtaking ugliness of last week’s cover: “The Case for Killing Granny.” Alongside a photo of an electrical plug. The cover story is penned by Evan Thomas, (Andover, Harvard, Virginia Law), currently teaching at Princeton, alongside Peter Singer, who believes newborn infants can be killed because they lack “rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness” and thus don’t qualify for personhood.”