[sockmonkey]

Cancer patients usually pass away from a planned terminal sedation.
This may be the first politically timed terminal sedation ever, though.

I thought the same thing...my neighbor had emphysema, and at the "appointed time", his wife, at the direction of hospice started giving him morphine every fifteen minutes. He was begging her to stop, but she dutifully kept it up from 8:15pm to 11:15pm which was when he very shortly thereafter took his last breath.

[helpfulresearcher]

When it was clear my Mom was dying, and she needed to be relieved of pain on that last part of life's journey, I administered the morphine as hospice directed. She completed her journey without fear or pain. It is the right way to do it. However, it is a matter of personal judgment/guesswork as to exactly how much morphine and when to give it. It is likely the how much and when were planned for maximum benefit to Obama.