doctor is back. This time it is being proposed as a "regulation"(?).
It will not be mandatory....hence it is voluntary(?).
If you do have these discussions ON AN ANNUAL basis, there will be a form of compensation(?).
So the incentive is to accomplish what? And if one does not do it, then what?

It is also being reported to keep this subject under the radar so to speak!!! Why? It has significant opportunity to be mis-understood !!!

You don't think it could be because there was so much controversy about it last year, that it was removed from the bill.....really?

The death panel will be back in play again. So how many feel Washington is learning from the past election?

Ittsa joke.

btk

Originally Posted by billethkid

doctor is back. This time it is being proposed as a "regulation"(?).
It will not be mandatory....hence it is voluntary(?).
If you do have these discussions ON AN ANNUAL basis, there will be a form of compensation(?).
So the incentive is to accomplish what? And if one does not do it, then what?

It is also being reported to keep this subject under the radar so to speak!!! Why? It has significant opportunity to be mis-understood !!!

You don't think it could be because there was so much controversy about it last year, that it was removed from the bill.....really?

The death panel will be back in play again. So how many feel Washington is learning from the past election?

Ittsa joke.btk

No no no Billie; you got to see the difference between this and the original "death panels". This is simply "counseling" and gentle "persuasion" to make you see that the cost of prolonging your life is not financially "moral" and is instead "selfish" and then, hopefully, you will see that for the good of the "community" you should let you life come to a dignified end.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/...s-end-life-pla

If my Dr. has an end of life discussion with me, I will have an end of relationship discussion with him.

Yoda

Richie,

If you had a loved one in a perstistive vegetative coma (God forbid that you ever would have), would you not want counseling by a social worker, minister, and doctor as to the best thing for the patient? Is it better to have them in the vegetative coma for 20 years in pain with no hope of recovery or better to have them sent peacefully off to Heaven?

Patients with incurable disease or conditions and their families will usually speak to a doctor and minister about end of life decisions and whether or not to take actions to prolong life.

This is nothing new. It is common sense. It is not death panels. Sometimes, it is the hardest act of love a person will ever make.

Yeah, forget any counseling. After all your family should be the ones to have to GUESS what you wanted should you lapse into a coma. Never mind having a discussion where a doctor could give you some education on the subject.

Wake up and smell the damn roses. There's another topic on here about how 'cruel' Medicare is for not being able to afford a particular procedure for someone who will die without it. Well, quite frankly, I do NOT want to be a burden to my family and I've let them know it. I watched my grandmother waste away from progressive strokes for fove years after doctors disobeyed her DNR orders after a heart attack.

It just seems to always come down to "who's ox is being gored?" because of our attitudes and taboos concerning death.

Originally Posted by Tbugs

Richie,

If you had a loved one in a perstistive vegetative coma (God forbid that you ever would have), would you not want counseling by a social worker, minister, and doctor as to the best thing for the patient? Is it better to have them in the vegetative coma for 20 years in pain with no hope of recovery or better to have them sent peacefully off to Heaven?

Patients with incurable disease or conditions and their families will usually speak to a doctor and minister about end of life decisions and whether or not to take actions to prolong life.

This is nothing new. It is common sense. It is not death panels. Sometimes, it is the hardest act of love a person will ever make.

I have been in that position and didn't;t need the fracking government to help me make a decision.

The next step is they will make the decision. Do you want the RMV telling you when to "OFF" granny?

Originally Posted by Yoda

If my Dr. has an end of life discussion with me, I will have an end of relationship discussion with him.

Yoda

Dont move to Arizona then Yoda.

Originally Posted by Topper1

Dont move to Arizona then Yoda.

Tell me about Arizona - don't know about it.

I'm interested to islandgal, but I bet it's the funding cuts by the Arizona State Senate for Medicaid payments for several types of transplants to close the state's budget gap.

djplong, please don't take this the wrong way. Talking about our loved ones is so personal and I don't want to offend you, but what makes you think these same doctors will do any better with an end of life request than they did with your grandmother's written orders of Do Not Resuscitate?

Life isn't all black and white. I've watched friends and family members die painful prolonged deaths. Their attitudes and our attitudes changed with the days and weeks as things got better and worse in the situations. It isn't cut and dry. I certainly don't won't the government involved in my medical care or life and death decisions. That is between me and my family and my doctor. But folks, I'm afraid we've let things go too far. I'm very distressed, mad and saddened at the shape this country is in now. Not just the Obamacare.

People arguing and justifying cuts to Medicare to let more people have access to Medicaid. What has happened to the people in this great nation? People saying they don't won't to be a burden to their families and seeming to indicate the government should get involved in our end of life decisions to see that our wishes are carried out? Sad, sad, sad.

at our age have been in a position to either witness or participate in end of days planning and at times difficult decision making.
And I would also venture a guess that many of us (I am tempted to say most of us) have done our home work with living wills, wills and estate plans.

And most of us, without intervention or coaxing from some number of un-involved bureaucratic un-involved, hidden agenda politicians, partisan lemmings.

To have a premise that these discussions should be undertaken in ones forties is an insult to real thinking, responsible Americans.

How can anybody buy into the charade that this phony shell game is in the best interest of we the people's most private and family focused event of our lives.

It is pure and simple a move toward the most invasive of invasions of privacy with the sole purpose of documenting and hiding a methodology to reduce services.

How in the did we make it this far in our lives and evolution of this country manage to make to where we are today.

And please spare me the BS rhetoric about the isolated incidents that make good fodder for the kool aid dispensers.

A disgusting charade.

btk

Gee, I really love reading all the extreme worse case scenarios one can come up with to try to convince someone to agree with a crap idea for their own good. I think all someone needs is a doctor to advise them of their treatment options for their illness and then that person can decide to do something or get another opinion or whatever.

But to try to come up with a hypothetical story, or even a personal story, where you feel you need a doctor trained in governmental directed "death acceptance" is just unbelievable, and, frankly, a little shocking.

I understand why "for the better good" bureaucrats would be promoting this, but for any free thinking American to agree is beyond me.

Originally Posted by RichieLion

Gee, I really love reading all the extreme worse case scenarios one can come up with to try to convince someone to agree with a crap idea for their own good. I think all someone needs is a doctor to advise them of their treatment options for their illness and then that person can decide to do something or get another opinion or whatever.

But to try to come up with a hypothetical story, or even a personal story, where you feel you need a doctor trained in governmental directed "death acceptance" is just unbelievable, and, frankly, a little shocking.

I understand why "for the better good" bureaucrats would be promoting this, but for any free thinking American to agree is beyond me.

Ok....I will try. My end of life decisions have been made and are contained in the appropriate, notorized and required legal documents. My great niece and her husband have them along with my will and they are on file at my hospital of choice. I will not give you a made up horrible story as to why at 60 years old I have them but only that these come as a result of 40 years of working in hospitals. The things of I seen!!!! Truthfully I don't want them happening to me. Hence the paperwork......

I have been trying to stay out of political and I admit that I speed read the above so my post may not be on topic.

The discussion about your plans for end of life is a routine thing that has been going on for a long time in medical offices. Nothing new...at least in Ohio. I don't know if this sort of thing has been different in different areas of our country.

They ask this as an intake question when you visit our oncologist for the first time in Ohio.

Helene answered this question 15 years ago when she was diagnosed with cancer and I discussed it five years ago. Our regular GP asked this of both Sweetie and I a couple of years ago.

When you think about it, it is good to think what you might do if you were unable to speak and in terrible pain.

You don't have to answer this question.

It is something none of us can avoid, death. None of us are getting out of here alive.

Grace and cologal, you are missing the point and proving the point all at once. It should be up to individuals to make these decisions and have these discussions with their physicians. Families and individuals have been doing it for years without the government's intervention.

But should the governement dictate and regulate this? "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."

When the final version of the health care bill was signed into law by Obama in March it did not include the regulation for advance directives. Now it has been written back into the bill with Medicare regulations...and supporters are being told to not broadcast their accomplishment.

US Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, said in an email to people like John Rockefeller, who were working with him on adding this back into the already approved bill, "While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth," Blumenauer said in the hush-hush email.

“We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are ‘supporters’ — e-mails can too easily be forwarded. Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

If it is such a wonderful thing, why keep it quiet?



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us...h.html?_r=3&hp

As a nurse who has seen way to much suffering due to family members not being able to "let go" and also as a hospice nurse who has seen people "pass" as comfortable and with as much love as possible, I see a real need for people to be aware of their options.

However, IMHO, the government has absolutely no business sticking its nose in the most private and personal decisions one will ever make. That is heading down a very frightening path.