'Hey Guys, Let's Smother Grandma...'

By Madeleine Kando

There is this provision in the Obama health care bill that would reimburse doctors for end-of-life consultations for seniors.

It’s a very common sense proposal by a common sense senator from Oregon. The idea is to give seniors a chance to clarify how much care they want in case they are incapacitated: do they want to be resuscitated, put on a respirator or fed through a tube? Or do they want to receive palliative care and be left to die in peace at home, surrounded by their family and loved ones? The default procedure in this country is that a doctor will take every measure in an emergency to keep a patient alive. In fact, most of the time you do not die peacefully with family around you in your home if you do not make plans. (Except for Oregon because more Oregonians plan for their end of life care.)

The amendment says nothing about doctor-assisted suicide, a legal option for terminally ill residents in Oregon for example and in some countries like Holland.

To many uninformed people whom I will call ‘the lynch mob of America’, spurred on by uninformed and dangerous TV talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, this amendment promotes government-sponsored euthanasia. ‘Congress requires seniors to have counseling that will tell them how to end their life sooner’, says one former Congress woman. Sarah Palin and others speak of government-funded death panels.

Some of these uninformed idiots have an issue with the fact that doctors get reimbursed to have such consultations. But doesn’t Medicare reimburse doctors for hip surgery? I don’t think a doctor would perform hip surgery for free, do you? These consultations are also voluntary and talking about how to die is not the same as shooting someone, is it?

The irony is that these (mostly right-wing) protestors are against this part of the bill because they say government should not interfere with their business. If I am not mistaken, this provision is actually trying to give patients more control over how they want to die. (I personally wish it did include an option for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, but that would be way too progressive, and add fuel to the fire).

Modern medicine has been good at prolonging our life span but it has turned away from the added responsibility of how to handle the side-effects of longer lives. This would be an important step in the right direction.leave comment here