I’m getting really tired of the GOP fear-mongering about the health care reform proposals. The most egregious of these, to me personally, is the “euthenasia” nonsense. John Boehner:

“This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich. said in a statement last month.

Sarah Palin:

“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,” Palin wrote.

Newt Gingrich (same article):

“You’re asking us to trust turning over power to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards,” Gingrich said.

I am reminded, yet again, of this quote from my favorite durned liberal movie:

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and personal character. Then you have an old photo of the President’s girlfriend. You scream about patriotism and you tell them she’s to blame for their lot in life, you go on television and you call her a whore.

Yes, my friends, Obama-care - go kill off all the old people.

All of this noise is about Section 1233 of H.R. 3200, “Advance Care Planning Consultation”. There is nothing about “euthanasia”. There isn’t even any slippery slope towards euthanasia. It is all spin - completely, utterly, almost criminally bogus spin. This is about something that is desperately needed in this country - end of life education and planning.

One of the major reasons I didn’t go back to work as an EMT after I got my health back in the early 1990s was that I had had enough of peoples’ failing to be able to cope with the end-of-life situations of their loved ones. The district I lived in was home to several nursing homes. On multiple occasions, we were called to take a patient to the ER - patients who has signed DNR orders, but whose families could not deal with the reality of their imminent passing. As an EMT, we had no discretion. We had to transport; we had to code them if they crashed. We had to ignore a signed, legal DNR, and take the risk of being sued for malpractice, on the basis that it’s better to be sued for doing something than for not doing something. It is a crushing, horrific situation to be stuck in - you are absolutely the bad guy, especially when the patient is lucid enough to be trying to stop you, but the family member with the power of attorney is insisting that you continue. No discretion.

This was the time when I formed my concrete beliefs about death with dignity and the need to for American families to get educated about end of life. I’ve spoken of this with friends, family, coworkers, others for the last 15-20 years. I’ve discussed it in comments at RTFLC and here in the past. My wife and I have both living wills and medical powers of attorney on file with the Living Will Registry; mine is more aggressive in its decisions about ending treatments than hers is; we had long conversations about this. I’ve seen too many people with end-stage Alzheimer’s - that will not be me, period. No way, no how. I am not going out like that. This conversation is something that most couples don’t do, but should. People have wills to take care of their money, but are either ignorant of the medical documents or afraid to actually have these conversations.

This is something that this small piece of the legislation might help to fix.

To me, this is perhaps one of the best pieces of the draft health care legislation. People need to get educated about things like living wills, advanced medical directives and medical powers of attorney. They need to have these conversations with their families, and families need to come to grips with the end-of-life wishes and needs of their elders. These things need to happen when people are still healthy, and of sound mind (and hopefully body).

There’s all sorts of noise conflating this with “rationing of health care”. This has nothing to do with rationing. It has to do with planning. hopefully well in advance of any need.

Not to mention that rationing happens more in private health care than in Medicare for end-of-life/chronic illness issues. Private insurance companies routinely decide who is and who isn’t too old and/or sick to get a life-saving organ transplant. Or some experimental treatment. Or simply stops paying - most people don’t pay attention to the fact that most, if not all, private health insurance has lifetime payment caps, usually in the $1-2M range, which can get eaten up damned quick with a chronic illness that requires full-time care.

In the end, the fear-monger “culture of life-at-all-costs-quality-be-damned-as-long-as-the-family-doesn’t-have-to-grieve” people are going to get this measure killed. And it’s a damned shame.