Old and Busted: Death Panels. New Hotness: Death Doctors

You might remember that Sarah Palin was raked over the coals in 2009 for using the phrase “Death Panels” to describe the “Advanced Care Planning Consultations” that were proposed in Obamacare. As the public clamor against the measure mounted, the Democrats swore up and down that the Death Panels didn’t exist, then removed the non-existent panels from the final bill before it passed. Palin was quietly vindicated, even if she is still ridiculed for her characterization.

But what we killed in Congress did not die. It simply slumbered until Democrats could remake it and sneak it back into Obamacare under another guise.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

Ed Morrissey correctly points out that this is how the Democrats will try to do most of their business now, with regulations that don’t require a run through the democratic process so as to avoid pesky things like the will of the people. They have no intention of being open and transparent about their business either. John Hayward blows the whistle on the hidden deal-making behind the New Death Doctors (hey, if Palin can coin a phrase, so can I). He is not kind.

In other words, you knuckle-dragging imbecile voters might get all riled up if you knew about their glorious triumph, so the Democrats wanted to keep it on the down-low.  They were able to complete the process of putting these regulations together behind closed doors, untroubled by any concerned citizens who might have received an email that accidentally got forwarded outside of the conspiracy.

But why should he be kind? What the Democrats are planning is as undemocratic as a despotic decree. The Death Panel — a group of people who would decide what care would be given to patients near the end of their lives — got its hearing in the public arena and America rejected it. We said we wanted that decision to be between us and our doctors. But that wasn’t good enough for the nascent totalitarians (and the Presidential appointee who is rather fond of the killer NHS over in Britain). The New Death Doctor proposal would co-opt the physicians by providing “incentives” for “voluntary advance care planning”.  Ann Althouse explains how that will work under the New Death Doctor regulation.

The question is what do patients want and how what they want will be determined. It seems to me that the effort is to get people to commit in advance to death-hastening choices, by getting everyone to sign these documents. Now, all the new regulation seems to do is to authorize Medicare reimbursements for the time health care professionals spend counseling patients about the value and importance of signing the document. It’s hard to see what’s wrong with that. If treatments are covered but advice about forgoing treatment is not covered, then there’s an incentive to do expensive things.

In a recent study of 3,700 people near the end of life, Dr. Maria J. Silveira of the University of Michigan found that many had “treatable, life-threatening conditions” but lacked decision-making capacity in their final days. With the new Medicare coverage, doctors can learn a patient’s wishes before a crisis occus.

Treatable? You have a condition that can be treated, but you can’t think well enough anymore to decide whether you’d prefer to die? If you’ve signed the document, the answer is you’d rather let the condition kill you, because you allowed the doctors to “learn [your] wishes before” this “crisis” occurred. You didn’t know what the crisis would be or how you would feel when it happened, but you had “wishes” then and these will be taken as your “wishes” now.

It’s also very easy to imagine that doctors will want to get that money sooner, rather than later, so they’ll get your “wishes” now, even though the circumstances under which your “wishes” will apply may occur years or even decades in the future. That drives an unnecessary and dangerous wedge between the patient and the doctor. Once this regulation goes into place, what confidence do any of us have that our doctor is working in our best interests, as opposed to those of the government? Make no mistake, when it comes to government-run health care, the interests of the government and our interests are most definitely at odds. If your doctor has a government-paid financial stake in getting an “advanced directive” from us, what confidence can you have that the advice you’ll get is geared toward living a long life if doing so incurs a great deal of government-paid cost?

The answer, of course, is little to none, which is why this New Death Doctor proposal needs its own Do Not Resuscitate order placed on it right now.

Other Posts of Interest:

• American Individualism isn’t a Bug, Man.
• Government-Run Health Care Leaves Over 13,000 Elderly Malnourished
• Save the Tonsils! Pass Obamacare!

Tags: Nanny State, National Health Care

Category: Health Care Craziness, The Rise of the Nanny State