Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

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Death panels are back:

WASHINGTON — When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html?_r=3&hpw=&pagewanted=all
 
Death panels never left. The insurance companies have always had a choice on whether people live or die by their decisions based on what coverage they would have and pay for.
 
Someone please educate me here. I thought the Church never prohibited not using extraordinary measures to keep someone alive. In fact, two priests at a veteran hospital reminded me and my brother of this when my father was dying. Let nature take its course seems pretty much the okay path to take.
 
ProVobis said:
Someone please educate me here. I thought the Church never prohibited not using extraordinary measures to keep someone alive. In fact, two priests at a veteran hospital reminded me and my brother of this when my father was dying. Let nature take its course seems pretty much the okay path to take.
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We are talking about whether govt appointed Panels should decide whether it is “cost effective” to treat someone. Very common in countries with socialized medicine and evidentltly soon to be common here
 
estesbob said:
We are talking about whether govt appointed Panels should decide whether it is “cost effective” to treat someone. Very common in countries with socialized medicine and evidentltly soon to be common here
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And those decisions won’t be made the way the decisions were made as to which Chrysler dealerships should be closed, namely, which dealerships were owned by Republicans?
 
gamewell45 said:
Death panels never left. The insurance companies have always had a choice on whether people live or die by their decisions based on what coverage they would have and pay for.
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Statist propaganda directive #13: If you are unable to advocate… obfuscate!
 
I have not seen the REGULATION yet. It sounds more like “a living will”?

Peace
 
hazcompat said:
I have not seen the REGULATION yet. It sounds more like “a living will”?

Peace
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A living will directed by a Govt panel But since they support killing children when they are deemed inconvenient I guess this is no big deal
 
Of course he does. Obama isn’t going to give up on his plan to push America toward the socialist ideal just because the ignorant American voters are increasingly opposed to it. It’s for their own good, after all. Obama knows best, and he’s going to make sure that he gets his way within the next two years, even if he has to ignore Congress and the Constitution to do so.

Words cannot express the contempt I feel for this miserable excuse for a President.
 
I’m not American so I don’t know: How did they work out who would receive healthcare and who wouldn’t, before the Obama healthcare plan?
 
You know, I still don’t get it here. All I see is that doctors will get paid for giving counsel to patients. Any interpretation beyond that is frankly reaching and full of FUDD.

The other thing is the phrase used in the article, “aggressive life-sustaining treatment”. What are we talking about here? Treatments that extend your life by 6 months? A year? For a bunch of people (us Catholics) who are purportedly Heaven-centered, we’re sure obsessed with squeezing every last second out of this life, despite the fact that we know that Heaven will be everything and more we ever needed.

It’s one thing to say we’re going to let people die from say syphilis (which we can easily treat in the vast majority of cases), but if someone’s got late stage cancer then they’re likely going to die fairly soon. Yes, it’s hardwired into us to fight for life and we shouldn’t give up on it, but we do have to realize that everyone’s eventually going to die (it’s just an inevitability).
 
estesbob said:
For telling the truth ?
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Are “death panels” the truth? Really? They exist right at this moment? Everything Palin said has come to pass? Or are they just “truth” to people who want them to be true so they can yell and scream at someone they don’t like.
 
curlycool89 said:
You know, I still don’t get it here. All I see is that doctors will get paid for giving counsel to patients. Any interpretation beyond that is frankly reaching and full of FUDD.

The other thing is the phrase used in the article, “aggressive life-sustaining treatment”. What are we talking about here? Treatments that extend your life by 6 months? A year? For a bunch of people (us Catholics) who are purportedly Heaven-centered, we’re sure obsessed with squeezing every last second out of this life, despite the fact that we know that Heaven will be everything and more we ever needed.

It’s one thing to say we’re going to let people die from say syphilis (which we can easily treat in the vast majority of cases), but if someone’s got late stage cancer then they’re likely going to die fairly soon. Yes, it’s hardwired into us to fight for life and we shouldn’t give up on it, but we do have to realize that everyone’s eventually going to die (it’s just an inevitability).
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I think the real danger is where do you draw the line. If it is, in principle, okay to end the life of someone who is terminally ill early, then that line can get pushed further and further and further out to the point that you’ll get terminated for having a head cold. That’s how Hitler started out … “life unworthy of life” became Jews to the gas chambers.

youtube.com/watch?v=NrJBY2l1MQQ
Bill Gates saying it might be better to have teachers keep their jobs than to keep grandma alive. If this becomes acceptable in principle, you have accepted that murder is okay if it leads to an economic benefit.
 
Not long ago, I found myself on a university seminar panel involving “end of life planning”. It was interesting that I was even asked to be on it, and that’s another story anyway.

But in the course of it, it became VERY evident that among the panel group there was anything but unanimity in what “end of life planning” even means, let alone what it should be. Among others, there was a physician, a nurse, social workers, shrinks, a lawyer and a clergymen . I suppose my presence was requested because I am very distrustful of the idea of placing one’s life in the hands of people (medical people) whose views of life vary as much as they do among people generally; a fact known to those who put the panel together. It may be noted that it was a “for credit” seminar, attendance mandatory for those in a nursing school, an NP school, the social work school, pre-med and those in psychology.

Clearly there were people on the panel and among the attendees whose idea of “end of life planning” was essentially that what really amounts to passive euthanasia is the thing to do when one’s “quality of life” diminishes to the point that he/she cannot engage in those things “he likes best to do”. ("Playing golf, then? I asked of the physician member. “Well, yes” was his response “if that’s sufficiently important to the patient”. ) There were those whose thought was to put in a living will that the relatives empowered to speak and hold the document are required to consult with the clergyman of the person in question concerning the doctrines of the person’s faith regarding extraordinary measures.

To me, that’s really the problem with all of this. Physicians (or NPs, who are likely to be doing most of this) are somehow supposed to advise individuals about “end of life planning” when they, themselves, have no consistent view of such things, nor any wiser advice than does anyone else. Nor do they understand the legal consequences of such documents any better than the average layman; something a lawyer on the panel made very clear.

So, given that there is no consensus on what any of it means, or ought to mean, why on earth would the government get itself into the business of funding this? Anything funded in the medical world is effectively encouraged. And what kinds of documents and printed material, what “guidelines” are these physicians to be given by the government? Given that we really do have a government that’s pretty insoucient when it comes to human life, is this something we should be concerned about the government doing?

I think it is.
 
gilliam said:
Death panels are back:

WASHINGTON — When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html?_r=3&hpw=&pagewanted=all
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By hook or by crook.

Here, go home and take a pill.

God Bless you.
+No more will sin and sorrow grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He’ll come and make the blessings flow
Far as the curse was found,
Far as the curse was found,
Far as, far as the curse was found.
Love, Dawn
 
gilliam said:
Death panels are back:
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I’m confused. Do you mean the death panel lies designed to scare elderly people into opposing health care reform? Or the transplant death panels in Arizona? Are we confusing fantasy and reality here?

Any clarification would be appreciated…
 
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