Today, Forbes.com published an article by David Whelan entitled “ObamaCare Dives Into End-Of-Life Debate.”
Lead sentence:
Buried halfway through the current version of “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” the House version of ObamaCare, is a set of proposals pertaining to end-of-life care.
What follows is a pretty balanced and nonhysterical look at what is in the bill and what people are saying about it. The whole article is worth reading, but I want to share the closing paragraphs, devoted to comments from Marilyn Golden of DREDF and Diane Coleman of NDY:
Still, some activist groups that are not necessarily opposed to ObamaCare are concerned about the end-of-life proposals in the bill. Marilyn Golden, of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund in Berkeley, Calif., has been active in opposing physician-assisted suicide at the state level. Many disabled people worry legalizing suicide would lead to euthanasia.
Golden points out that many doctors, when counseling patients, push for do-not-resuscitate orders or have them sign boilerplate documents that can lead to the premature denial of lifesaving medical care. “I don’t want to say we’re opposed to the language in the bill,” she says. “But there are legitimate concerns about how advanced directives are administered.”
“There is reason to be concerned,” says Diane Coleman, of Not Dead Yet, a group in Rochester, N.Y., that opposes physician-assisted suicide and what it calls medical killing. “The disability community,” she says, “often experiences pressure to sign treatment-withholding orders.”
She cites a case of a woman who works in her building who became a quadriplegic 11 years ago. Her physicians encouraged her family to remove life support while she was on a ventilator for five months, even though she was improving and eventually recovered to the point where she could live independently with a wheelchair.
Those concerned about unwittingly getting the plug pulled are advised to make it very clear to all their medical providers that they do not have a “DNR,” and that if they stop breathing or their heart stops they want to be revived.
“Society does devalue older and disabled people,” Coleman says. “And the medical profession is not always very accountable.”
There is a “comments” section for the article, so please check out the whole article and leave a comment. –Stephen Drake