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VA pushes an end to life
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There has been a lot of talk about end-of-life counseling lately, with people like Sarah Palin claiming that the Obama administration has a section on “death panels” in the healthcare bill. Supporters of the bill claim that there is no such thing, though they don’t deny that the government would pay doctors to offer end-of-life counseling to their patients. In a healthcare reform bill that is touted by Obama to be all about cutting the costs of healthcare, giving incentive for doctors, whose very job is to preserve life, to nudge patients toward ending their life rather than undergoing expensive treatment is more than a little tasteless. Sadly, however, this is nothing new. As stated by Jim Towey in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed column, the Department of Veterans Affairs has been treating our brave soldiers that way for a while.
The VA’s unofficial living will, an end-of-life planning document called “Your Life, Your Choices,” is being circulated throughout their hospitals and nursing homes across the country. In the beginning, it was given to any debilitated or aging veterans, but since last month the VA has instructed that it is to be given to all patients along with counseling from the healthcare practitioner.
While suggesting that someone write a living will may not be immoral, “Your Life, Your Choices” is written in such a way as to steer the patients toward death, full of leading questions and statements about the suffering patients would undergo as well as the burden they would place on their family if they remained alive.
There is a section titled “What Makes Your Life Worth Living,” in which various conditions are listed and the patient is to check a box with answers of “difficult, but acceptable,” “worth living, but just barely,” or “not worth living.” To their credit, there is also a box for “can’t answer now.” Some of the conditions listed are that the patient “can only get around in a wheelchair” and “spend all day at home.” The former is insulting to anyone confined to a wheelchair and the latter describes my state when I was unemployed.
It gets worse. There are 3 conditions that are listed to make the patients feel guilty if they choose life, stating that the patient “caused severe emotional burden for my family,” “can no longer contribute to my family’s well being” and is “a severe financial burden on my family.” The intent of those statements is to make it clear to patients that choosing life is selfish and would hurt the ones they love.
There is even one condition that says “I cannot seem to ‘shake the blues.’” I was unable to “shake the blues” for almost a year once. If, during that time, someone had asked me the leading question of if I felt my life was worth living, I probably would have said no, and I have never suffered anything nearly as traumatic as the experiences of our wounded veterans.
The document was first published in 1997 and was written by Dr. Robert Pearlman, who is an advocate for physician-assisted suicide. The Bush administration, in one of those rare moments of good sense, ended its use by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The document was then rewritten in 2007. There were no religious or disability advocates on the panel that rewrote the document. The new version lists only one organization as an additional resource for patients: Compassion and Choices, the right-to-die advocates formerly known as the Hemlock Society. That group, according to their own website, devotes itself to finding legal and legislative initiatives for euthanasia and “assert constitutional protection for aid in dying.” The document does not attempt to balance that out by also recommending a pro-life organization.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration reinstituted “Your Life, Your Choices” as the unofficial living will presented to all patients in VA hospitals and nursing homes. To treat our brave veterans, who risked their lives protecting the life and liberty of Americans everywhere, as burdens who are a drain on their families and the government is despicable.
Even if the “death panels” in Obama’s healthcare bills are fictional, as the supporters claim, given his government’s treatment of our veterans, I am not convinced they don’t see nudging disabled, sick and elderly patients toward death as a good way to cut costs. If the Obama administration really wants to assure the people that they won’t push euthanasia, then they need to prove it by removing this heinous document from the VA.
Also recommended:
The truth about death counseling (Charles Krauthammer column)
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