How End of Life Issues Are Being Used to Thwart Health Care Reform

[Joanne98]

As they muster their forces against health care reform, Republican culture warriors and conservative media outlets stir fear of “deadly doctors” and "government-encouraged euthanasia".

or the past several months, as I have worked on writing a book about death, dying, and grief, I have kept my ear to the Aid in Dying movement in the United States, listening in on both advocates and their “pro-life” opponents. I’d come to suspect that end-of-life issues would be a major hurdle to health care reform. Today, unfortunately, I am closer to being right.

Since House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) released a statement on Friday accusing the health care reform bill of leading America down “a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia,” opponents of the bill have seized on the aspects of the bill that concern end-of-life choice as the great obstacle to the bill’s passage. Although the leap from aid in dying to "euthanasia" or even "assisted suicide" is patently false, and entirely misleading, everyone from Fox News to the New York Post, are scaring the elderly with threats of denied service and coerced assisted suicide.

Boehner's statement came at the end of a difficult week for the Obama administration: Obama’s poll numbers dropped notably; his health care road show received mixed reviews; and the administration was called out for lack of transparency regarding health care industry meetings. The media meme of the week, as House and Senate recess loomed, was no momentum. That Boehner chose Friday for the release, on the heels of all this successful stalling and as the five-day media cycle distractedly wandered off into the summer Friday afternoon, hardly mattered to the other “right-to-life” advocates, those concerned about the proliferation of assisted suicide in the United States.

“Pro-Life” Expands Its Reach

Increasingly, opponents of end-of-life choice have succeeded in inserting the fourth issue of the pro-life platform (abortion, stem-cell research, and cloning being the other three) into the national debate. While abortion issues will most likely remain the rallying point, and cloning and stem-cell research (Obama lifted the ban on the latter in February) have garnered little public interest, the bogeyman of euthanasia is proving to be a subject of greater use as Republicans work to frame their resistance to health care reform.

In part this is due to advocates and opponents successfully styling their efforts after their counterparts in the abortion conflict: privacy, “end of life choices,” and access to information have become the cause of assisted suicide proponents; their opponents have worked from the same “pro-life” institutions, language, and methodologies that were organized to protest abortion. With one significant new adjustment: Pro-lifers are now forced to argue for sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship and not, as with abortion, for government regulation of access to services.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/1707/will_euthanasia_kill_health_care_/?comments=view&cID=1841#c1841



"Pro-lifers are now forced to argue for sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship and not, as with abortion, for government regulation of access to services"

The heretics are kinda caught between a rock and a hypocrite hard place.

[bemildred]

1. They need to explain why HMO meddling is better than government meddling.

At least the government has some sort of direct accountability to the public.

[NJCher]

2. yesterday NPR did a rundown on this

These people stop at nothing.

In one situation, a person was told he would have to sign papers telling how he wanted to die.



Cher

[madrchsod]

3. this is nothing new...

we already have "end of life decisions" being discussed everyday in the usa. anyone who has faced death or have to chose what is best for a loved one has discussed this with a physician. my sisters and i had to make the decision to end our mother`s life after a massive stroke destroyed her brain.

the mother fucking republicans know they are lying and they have no fucking business saying that shit.

obama needs to start growing a pair of balls like lbj had...




did you notice i`m just a tad pissed off about this.....

[Seldona]

4. Not everyone thinks like republicans.

In 1999 *Bush signed the 'Futile Care Law,' as Texas governor, which made it legal for hospitals to refuse life-sustaining care to patients whose lives were deemed 'futile.' It took republicans a few more years to add children.

These idiots have the NERVE to attempt to tie euthanasia with the health care reform bill? How can they forget what their own party did in Texas? Well to be fair, it has been ten years. Their Chinese made bumper-stickers would have faded by now.

snip

"What's even more significant in the Clark case is that the Texas bill that allows health care providers to end a human life despite the wishes of the patient and the patient's family was signed into law in 1999 by President George W. Bush as Texas Governor. However, in 2005, he rushed back to the White House from Easter vacation to sign a bill rushed through Congress which was designed to save the life of Terri Schiavo because of his "presumption in favor of life."

"Under Chapter 166 of the Texas Health and Safety Code, if an attending physician disagrees with a surrogate over a life-and-death treatment decision, there must be an ethics committee consultation (with notice to the surrogate and an opportunity to participate). In a futility case such as Andrea's in which the treatment team is seeking to stop treatment deemed to be non-beneficial, if the ethics committee agrees with the team, the hospital will be authorized to discontinue the disputed treatment (after a 10-day delay, during which the hospital must help try to find a facility that will accept a transfer of the patient). These provisions, which were added to Texas law in 1999, originally applied only to adult patients. In 2003, they were made applicable to disputes over treatment decisions for or on behalf of minors. One of the co-drafters in both 1999 and 2003 was the National Right to Life Committee. Witnesses who testified in support of the bill in 1999 included representatives of National Right to Life, Texas Right to Life, and the Hemlock Society. The bill passed both houses, unanimously, both years, and the 1999 law was signed by then Governor George W. Bush. The statute was designed to keep these cases out of court."

"And no, she's not a Medicaid patient. Her private insurance is funding her health care and hospitalization. However, no one knows what dialog those insurance officials may have engaged in with hospital officials."

"The North Country Gazette learned late Monday that a lawyer has come forward to try to assist the family in obtaining a temporary injunction against the hospital and to stop the removal of life support from Andrea. Efforts are still be being to locate another hospital to which she can be transferred. June Maxam 4-24-06"

snip

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/042406HoustonLife.html

Pro-life? Please!

[Crunchy Frog]

5. That was the sister of a DUer,