Focusing on condemnation of some exaggerations and hyperbole in the questions raised about the promotion of “advance care planning” in H.R.3200, the House health restructuring bill, President Obama and others have ignored or swept aside legitimate concerns about the troubling nature of pushing older people to consider rejecting life-saving medical treatment in the context of what is promoted as a cost-saving measure in health carereform. Testimony recently presented by the Chairman Barbara Meara of the New York State Right to Life Committee provides a well-documented and careful analysis of the dangers in these provisions as written.
[Testimony text is available at: http://www.nrlc.org/HealthCareRationing/NYtestimony.pdf]
In addition, an article by Jim Towey detailing his fight to remove a Veteran’s Administration document that illustrates precisely the sort of unbalanced pressure to reject treatment critics fear, a fight that was successful in the previous Administration but was reversed by the Obama Administration, makes chilling reading. [Article available at: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWEzMjVlODBiMmFhNDNiNTRiZTg1ZWRmNzU1NDc4YTE=&w=Mw==]
I am a nurse and I don't see why this comes as a surprise. Advance Directories, no codes have been in action for years. Most patients in nursing homes want these as they don't want to br hooked up to life saving equipment which only gives them a poor quality of life. I don't want to exist on machines.
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