Excellent Essay on End of Life Decision Making by Cynthia Yockey

READ IT HERE!

Wow, the PUMAsphere is impressive!!

SYD

Best of the PUMAsphere This Week: Death Panel Discussion

Thanks to the following PUMAs for keeping me up to date on the "Health Care Bill:"

Woman State quoting Taranto at the WSJ: "If She's Dim and He's Brilliant, How Did He Lose?"

PUMA for Life linking to Tammy Bruce: "If Some Chick in an Igloo Didn't Have a Laptop..."

HILLBUZZ linking to C4P: "Don't Give The Leftists Ammunition."

Free Me Now linking to the Washington Times: "Palin Target Renounces Care Rationing."

Ok. Let me come clean on this. I am all for end of life counseling!!! Every five years is not too often. BUT.... and this is BIG... end of life counseling should not be linked in any way with cost containment considerations. Therefore, it cannot and should not *ever* become a service offered by Medicare, or Medicaid, or for-profit Insurance Companies.

To link "End of Life Care" with cost containment, in that way, is beyond the pale of ethical health care practice. It's a conflict of interest with unimaginable consequences. For both Physicians and their patients.

My dear Liberal leaning friends, I am sorry... but the mere presence of a provision that would allow Medicare to pay for "end of life counseling," and to dictate how often it should be offered, *is* a red flag. It should signal, to any thinking non-partisan, a serious potential for other weaknesses in the Health Care Bill that is currently being *rushed* through Congress.

Think about it.

SYD

Given Your Grandfather's Age ... and the Fact that it was Five PM on Friday....

The Onion explores why physicians may not be the best professionals to make "end of life decisions."

"Given your grandfather's age, overall state of health, limited medical coverage, the fact that it was almost 5 p.m. on a Friday, and that hand cramp I got midway through, the odds were stacked against him. He was in bad shape. Nonetheless, from the moment I woke up from my afternoon nap until the minute we decided to call it a day, Dr. Juzwiak and I gave it the ol' college try—you can be sure of that.

He's in a better place now, really. This hospital is terribly overcrowded, there's no AC, and I feel like I see a different sick guy walk in here every 15 minutes. It kind of sucks."

Just something to think about as we rush headlong into paying them to do so.

With all due respect, I do not understand why physicians are being paid to make these kinds of decisions with their patients? Why not chaplains? Social workers?

And haven't such discussions ALWAYS been voluntary?

Just sayin'.....