Hi,
Prof. Rita Marker has written a great article exposing the scam behind
the Congress's H.R. 3200 known as "health care reform" bill. See the
article below.
Best wishes,
If people contemplate and really see the sanctity of life, their "quality of life" arguments fall away and they will understand that we are here to care for each other, not to kill each other. Caring, and not convenience, is the sign of a civilized and just society!
Preserving the original hospice mission...
Ron Panzer
for Hospice Patients Alliance
http://www.hospicepatients.org
"What I do you cannot do
but what you do, I cannot do.
The needs are great, and none of us, including me, ever do great things.
But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful." - Mother Teresa
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The Hospice Patients Alliance is a 501(c)(3) charitable patient advocacy organization acting to preserve the original hospice mission and to promote quality end-of-life services. Many ask us "what can I do to help? The answer is that you need to get involved, share what you know and please, support us by donating to our nonprofit! You can donate at our secure donation page:
https://id304.securedata.net//hospicepatients/donations.html
Your support helps us help others in need. Thank you for your continued support!
Also, please share this newsletter with others who you know are concerned about the quality of end-of-life care, the sanctity of life and protection of the vulnerable patients.
Ron is available to speak to your group. For more information about hospice or speaking arrangements, visit Hospice Patients Alliance online or call [616] 866-9127. The information provided by Hospice Patients Alliance is provided in the spirit of consumer advocacy in the belief that informed consumers of health care are best able to access quality care. Hospice Patients Alliance does not provide legal or medical advice. If you are seeking legal or medical advice, then a competent and experienced attorney or physician should be consulted. If anyone wishes to be added to the Hospice Patients Alliance newsletter list, just send an email with the subject line "Subscribe" to newsletter@...
In order to assure you get the newsletter, add the domain "hospicepatients.org" to the "friends" list of your email software, so that email/spam filters do not block the newsletter. If you need a specific email address to add, add patientadvocates@... and rpanzer@...
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/talking_seniors_to_death.html
September 06, 2009 The American Thinker
Talking Seniors to Death
By Rita L.
Marker
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 "end-of-life continuum" discussion?
In
most states that continuum would culminate in such services as
palliative care and hospice. However, in Oregon and Washington the
continuum extends to the provision of a prescription for a lethal dose
of drugs under those states' "Death with Dignity" laws. This should be
of concern to all.
The background of Section 1233 sheds some light on its inclusion
in the health care reform bill.
According to C & C's newsletter,
the organization has worked long and hard for such language, which is
"part of a great advance in end-of-life care, building upon several
years of thoughtful and strategic groundwork." C & C proudly acknowledges
its leadership role in placing Section 1233 in the bill: "Compassion
& Choices and its supporters have worked tirelessly with supportive
members of Congress to include in proposed reform legislation a
provision requiring Medicare to cover patient consultation with their
doctors about end-of-life choice (section 1233 of House Bill 3200)."
And it plans to continue
leading the charge:
"As
Congress debates health insurance reform, Compassion & Choices is
leading the charge to make end-of-life choice a centerpiece of any
program that emerges. We are working hard to reach our goal to make
end-of-life choice a centerpiece of national health insurance reform."
C & C has worked hand in hand with Oregon Congressman Earl
Blumenauer who it describes as a " long-time
supporter
of individual choice." Indeed, Blumenauer has been an outspoken
supporter of Oregon's assisted-suicide law, the "Death with Dignity
Act." During a floor
speech in 1998, he stated:
"In
Oregon, our legislation, Death with Dignity, is still a work in
progress, but the fact is the preliminary evidence suggests that this
option may actually reduce the incidence of violent suicide while easing
the burden on both the individual and their family....
"As we age as a society, exponentially, with the increase of the
elderly population,
and just the growth in our population, this will become more
serious....The evidence suggests that Americans support the principles
of Death with Dignity."
In a 2004 press
release, he applauded a court ruling that upheld the
assisted-suicide law.
"This
is a great victory for the people of Oregon who decided not once, but
twice that people should have the right to make personal end-of-life
decisions without federal interference," he said. (Blumenauer seems
to ignore the fact that, also in 2004, he said the government shouldn't
meddle in personal end-of-life decisions. Yet, now he's attempting to
dictate the content of communication between patients and their
doctors.)
He continued, "Every day people
across the country struggle with these end-of-life decisions but Oregon
is the only state that has protections and safeguards in place." (Note
that he, like other assisted-suicide activists, refers to assisted
suicide as an "end-of-life decision.")
Blumenauer's
"end-of-life" terminology is part and parcel of Section 1233. Clearly
expressing his ownership of the section, he described an incident that
took place when he was presiding over House proceedings. Writing about
Section 1233 in the Huffington
Post, Blumenauer
stated, "Actually, I know a little bit about this section because it's
a bill that I wrote which was incorporated into the overall
legislation."
His earlier incorporated bill is HR 2911,
called the "Advance Planning and Compassionate Care Act." In fact, a
portion of that bill, (Sec. 211, p. 50) makes up almost the entirety of
Section 1233.
Although Blumenauer and other defenders
of Section 1233 vociferously deny that it could have anything to do
with assisted suicide, his earlier bill acknowledged that assisted
suicide would be included in such consultations. Since federal law
currently prohibits federal funding from being used for "items and
services" related to assisted suicide, Blumenauer inserted language
into HR 2911 (Sec. 111, p. 19) stating that advance care planning
"shall not be construed to violate the Assisted
Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997."
That exception did not make its way into HR 3200, probably because any
reference to assisted suicide would raise red flags. Also, not
contained in HR 3200 is a provision from Blumenauer's earlier bill
(Sec. 121, p. 31) to "encourage providers to discuss advance care
planning with their patients of all ages."
Blumenauer
is not the only lawmaker to propose advance care planning
consultations. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced a similar bill,
curiously called the "Senior Navigation and Planning Act of 2009" ( SB 1251).
Warner told Medical
Futility
that he submitted the legislation because Congress is considering
health care reform and he would like to see some of his ideas
incorporated into that legislation. His bill (Sec. 6, p. 14) would force
doctors to provide information on advance directives and other
end-of-life planning tools in "a form and manner, and at a time,
determined to be appropriate by the Secretary [of Health and Human
Services]." The consequence for not doing so would be severe. No
payment would be made to physicians for any items and services
furnished after January 1, 2014, unless they agreed (under a process
established by the Secretary) to provide individuals with information
on advance directives and other end-of-life planning tools.
Technically,
a patient would not be forced to have an advance care planning
consultation. However, physicians would be unlikely to treat them
unless they agreed to do so since doctors who didn't provide the
end-of-life talk would not be paid for any other services.
Could
coercion like this be avoided by deleting the advance care planning
consultation from HR 3200? Clearly, the answer is "No." If a
particular intervention is not mentioned in HR 3200, it can easily be
reinserted when the details of covered benefits are determined by one
of the myriad committees that would be charged with formulating the
particulars through the rule-making process. In the final analysis,
any "benefit" that is not explicitly prohibited in a health care reform
bill could become a covered benefit.
Would the actual
provision of assisted-suicide drugs be covered? That would certainly
be cost effective, since dead patients don't consume Medicare dollars.
But coverage of the actual lethal prescription wouldn't be necessary.
As Oregon's
suicidal approach
to health care has demonstrated, a government health plan could deny
wanted and needed treatment and then suggest assisted suicide as an
alternative. Initially, an organization like C & C could pay for
the oh-so-inexpensive lethal prescription.
Such
assistance by C & C would undoubtedly be touted as compassionate,
would advance the organization's agenda and could, eventually, lead to
the repeal of the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act. C & C
has many powerful friends on Capitol Hill, including Senator Dianne
Feinstein (D -CA). Feinstein, who is the honorary co-chair for a
November 5 fund-raiser
for C & C, is on record endorsing
a failed proposal for an Oregon-style assisted-suicide law in
California. So it is not beyond the realm of possibility that, if HR
3200 passes, assisted suicide could eventually be an included benefit
in any qualified health benefit program.
However, passage
of the bill is far from assured, thanks to seniors across the country.
They have read Section 1233. They are making it clear that they want
no part of government-designed death talk. They are savvy. They are
informed. They are not angry mobs. They are intelligent citizens who
have been expressing their strong opinions. For now, they are
successfully fending off the soft smothering cushion of deadly
governmental paternalism. But they cannot stop now.
Only
by continuing to speak up and speak out will seniors be spared the
subtle and not so subtle pressure to die and get out of the way.
Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/talking_seniors_to_death.html
at September 08, 2009
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