Soon we will all have to face end-of-life.
The government is now getting more involved and will actually pay doctors to advise patients on their options--costly procedures or pull the plug. Medicare coverage will now have new regulations regarding end-of-life planning starting on Jan. 1.
Are Death Panels, a name coined by Sarah Palin, coming back for consideration? As we all have faith in our doctors to advise us correctly, opponents have said that such a policy could encourage doctors to advise patients to end their lives prematurely. What was once a two-way split in philosophy, now has been compromised by government intervention--the Feds paying doctors to advise and influence the patient. There is a conflict of interest here as the government's goal is to reduce the cost of medical, not save lives.
As Sarah Palin said back in 2009: “The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
Read it at The New York Times.
3 comments:
Great. I will be eligible for Medicare in just a few years. For the new year I guess more exercise and a better diet are in order.
Got to get rid of all these old people to make room for the illegals. It's sounding like Nazi Germany.
The question really is, who is really making the decision here? If the patient says he would rather die than to be on any life support, then is this assisted suicide if the doctor goes along?
Pete W.
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