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Dash of Pepper

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 When is a death panel not a death panel?
By SHEILAH PEPPER
The Gazette StaffSarah Palin has been excoriated by the Left and some moderates for calling the end-of-life counseling in the House's healthcare plan a "death panel."
Some have said end-of-life counseling currently exists. Okay, if that's the case, why include it in the government-run healthcare proposal? Could it be that it is one way of rationing? Could rationing methods include encouraging the very elderly or the very ill to forego treatment?
But now - there is this: A government-run healthcare system ALREADY contains end-of-life directives. It's the death book for veterans published and promoted by the Veteran's Healthcare System. Apparently it was created around 1997. When the Bush people became aware of it, it was dropped. But it has resurfaced under the current administration.
On August 18th, Jim Towey about an article in the Wall Street Journal titled "The Death Book for Veterans." In it, he details the end-of-life primer titled "Your Life, Your Choices: Planning for Future Medical Decisions."
Generally, instructions, such as living wills, are put on paper when people are still relatively healthy. However, the VA publications seems aimed at those, older or not, who have some medical issues.
According to Towey, it steers "vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living." The publications contain a questionnaire that covers a variety of situations. One question is directed at people in wheelchairs, another asks about depression.
Other queries ask about being a "burden" to one's family - a question that might induce feelings of guilt.
It makes one suspect that the VA may want to contain costs via rationing. One form of rationing is to withhold certain types to treatment, especially for the aged. It's starting to feel like our bureaucrats subscribe to a culture of death.
There is so much wrong with the current healthcare proposals, at least in the House bill, that it's hard to zero in on it and bad things just keep surfacing. However, at its core, the push for the public option is the most damaging. The president repeats, ad nauseum, the canard that "you will be able to keep your current health plan if you like it." He's not a stupid man. Does he think his audience is? Anyone with the slightest understanding of the market place can see that the existing private plans will shrivel and die once they are forced to compete with the government, which has deep pockets. It may take a few years, but they will eventually go under and we will be forced into the government-run system.
The other frightening thing is the back-breaking cost. Even WITHOUT nationalized healthcare, our deficits are forecast to go two trillion dollars higher than the White House forecast last spring.
Senator Joe Liberman is right when he states that, for the time being, we need to put a hold on the healthcare issues, and focus on getting out of the recession. But there is only a feeble hope that saner minds and cooler heads can prevail in this Congress.
Copyright©2009SheilahPepper

 

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