Worries are being expressed in some quarters that the House health care reform bill would require senior citizens to receive a mandatory “Advance Care Planning Consultation” every five years, the intent being to push seniors into choosing an earlier death as a cost saving measure. But does it? That’s hard to tell, since the language of the bill refers to other existing laws, and is hence almost unintelligible.
There is a provision for seniors to receive a consultation every five years or when their health status changes materially. The intent is clearly to have them sign advance directives eschewing care. But the bill doesn’t require that care be eschewed, and indeed, mentions the option of full care.
Still, mandatory counseling? That smacks of reeducation, doesn’t it? More details over at Secondhand Smoke.
July 18th, 2009 | 2:55 pm
As a lawyer, I can easily see how “mandatory [purportedly neutral] counselling” would require paperwork, including reports filed on each counselling session (so the practitioner or agency could file for payment). It is just a matter of time and a few steps of evolution of the process, until seniors who are recalcitrant, combative, or uncooperative in signing the preferred recommendations could easily be at risk for entry into a data bank of early warning of incompetency (driving hazard, etc.) or other negative criteria. // This “counselling” needs to be fought hard at this point, including as an obligation on medical providers to have offered “full medical care.”
July 18th, 2009 | 8:54 pm
Yes. We are giving up way too much freedom here. Because there will be controls way beyond the actual medical services that will be imposed in the name of reducing health care costs. I am frankly stunned that we have come to this pass.
Thanks Dilys
July 20th, 2009 | 7:49 am
I turn 65 later this year. In 10 years or so it will be my civic duty to check out of this life. If I don’t die naturally or do myself in, there will be immense pressure to euthanize me either directly, or indirectly by withholding what would otherwise be “normal care.”
I’ll be OK. But please pray for the millions of my peers who will be caught in this vise, if we let this evil man whom we have elected president have his way with socialized medicine.
July 24th, 2009 | 6:33 pm
this sounds like world war two germany! I wonder if they are building the trains to take us to the death camps? will we have the choice of being shot or gased ? will the mass graves eventually be bad for the enviorment?
August 2nd, 2009 | 4:06 pm
This isn’t a bad idea. It might eliminate a family from choosing open heart surgery for their 89 year old father or hip surgery on the 90 year old mother who fell. I think better education about hospice and palliative care is needed. It is not euthanasia, it is quality life over quantity.
August 3rd, 2009 | 2:01 pm
Leave it to our communist leader to pull something like this.
All he is doiong is preparing them to say “yes” to euthanization.
Sicko
August 3rd, 2009 | 2:04 pm
Hey eleln – Augus 2nd,
We’ll see how you feel when you are 89 and fall and break your hip, but have the quality of life to live two 100. YES, any time someone is BRAINWASHED, as our young people have been, it would be called ethanasia!!!!!
August 28th, 2009 | 2:02 pm
But much such counseling already occurs, whether as compassionate care, care for people with risk factors for dementia, or people seeking to maintain an up to date living will. No matter how extreme a scenario you can imagine, insurance companies with a profit motive will get there long before the government, which has none.
Randy
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