Jim Towey wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal that Obama’s Veterans’ Affairs department had revived a controversial and previously discontinued 53-page pamphlet on end-of-life issues for wounded soldiers. The debate over what Towey calls the “Death Book” bodes poorly for the president’s position in the health care debate.
We were supposed to be beyond any debate over “death panels” when it comes to health care reform. But now the administration is scrambling to explain whether and why it has been referring physicians to use an educational document for end-of-life planning that strongly hints at the worthlessness of life when its quality is diminished by, for example, being wheelchair-bound or having bladder control problems.
The Puget Sound VA website still refers to the 53-page pamphlet Your Life, Your Choices.
Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
Newest from the UK, the much-credited-and-referenced bastion of Perfect Healthcare (by the Leftists/Socialists of American government). From the UK Daily Telegraph:
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.
BZ, I saw Towey’s interview with Chris Wallace. After Towey’s interview, Tammy Duckworth was interviewed. She demanded that she be intereviewed by herself, and not along with Mr. Towey.
Duckworth is something like the VA Information Officer, or VA Administration Secretary.
She is a veteran of Iraq – an aviator. She lost both of her legs there.
She denied that the pamphlet was even on the website. Wallace kept telling her she was wrong. She also kept alluding that Towey just wanted to sell his booklets for $5 each.
The general opinion, was that the administration through her under the bus. That she hadn’t a clue what the interview would entail. She was not prepared at all. So much for taking care of our veterans because she either drank the kook-aid or…
What you are laying out here is horrendous. So much is coming at us that it just…well, it just creates “chaos” doesn’t it? Just like the plan calls for.
Do NOT. Do NOT buy into ObamaKare.
It ISN’T about your HEALTH.
It is ONLY about raw, naked POWER.
And NOTHING ELSE.
Who? Who?? WHO is demanding that ALL our politicians MUST be under the PRECISE SAME plan?
Oh no.
They wouldn’t LOWER themselves to the so-called “public” option.
They only want the BEST.
BZ
After BHO speaks to the schoolchildren, how many of those children will go home with a favorable impression of BHO? Quite a lot, I think, unless parents have prepared their children otherwise.
I have the nagging feeling that BHO’s address to schoolchildren has a lot to do with promoting ObamaKare. Call me paranoid. I don’t care.
When I went to the link with the memo for Obama’s speech to schoolchildren, all I saw was that he would be encourageing students to understand the “importance of taking responsibility for their success in school.”
What’s wrong with that?
And, is Always On Watch suggesting that parents should prepare their children to have an UNfavorable impression of their President? That does’t seem terribly American…
BZ, it surely isn’t about our health. I heard Stenny Hoyer, in his townhall, when asked if he would commit to the same plan, say that everyone in Congress would have the same choices we have. No one questioned that. Of course, what he meant is, if we want to be on the government option, we can do that but if we want to continue with what we have now, we can do that, but you cannot do that.
Liars, liars.
Anonymous, Obama will be asking what the children can do to help him, not the country – unless they change the question. The point is, no one trusts this man.
The point has been made several times that this is how the Hitler youth began, and what was really behind getting into the schools was the ability to spy on the parents.
This President needs to stay out of the schools. His whole administration is uber-radical in everything he does.
I just read the press release again Maggie, and I still don’t see anything about the Prez “asking what the children can do to help him.” Actually, it seems like his speech will be focused on getting the children to know how they can help THEMSELVES, and not rely on others to deliver education to a “passive audience.”
If…IF…he strays from that and starts blathering on about other aspects of national policy (like health care), then you got me on board. I’d just like to wait until that happens first, without trying to presume trouble where none is indicated.
As far as speaking in schools in general is concerned: both Presidents Bush made school appearances. Bush Sr. even gave a speech on largely the same subject back in the early-90s. I feel like we’re the pot calling the kettle black by creating an uproar about Obama’s appearance.
What Obama and the rest of the supporters of any health care ‘reform’ has yet to answer:
1) Where will you get more doctors? As the Boomers age they need more doctors and nurses, and that is a 30 year outlook for that increased number. Where will they come from?
2) Tort reform. The spiraling cost of care has a factor put into it by increased insurance costs. In a single payer plan from the US government, those suits are levied against the treasury, thus upping the potential payout from paltry millions to hundreds of millions per suit. If you make the government immune (via sovereign immunity) you then have no recompense nor any easy way to hold the insurer accountable for bad practice of insurance in support of medicine. When an entity can decide what health care you get reimbursed for, when, for how much and is immune to prosecution, you have set up a horrific system and no bureaucratic set of ‘panels’ will actually make it better or change its ways. Ask anyone who works inside government on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of those institutions. Private insurance needs this to get rid of punitive damages, which are a lottery to those injured by medical practice. Not doing so demonstrates lobbyist input into the system to retain such things for the benefit of lawyers.
3) Government track record. There are three areas where government has great input or near sole oversight: Medicare/Medicaid, VA health system, and Native American health care. Government has demonstrated a clear lack of ability to manage them, provide care, provide good services or reimburse for the cost of procedures. With these three the track records are those of miserable failure, not redounding success.
4) Containing costs or reducing same of health care. Believe it or not taking out a significant portion of the profit of insurers and pharmaceuticals will NOT help either. If you like modern midicines and procedures, and having them available because so many are able to pay for them, then what would reducing the reimbursement do to that system? Profit is not a dirty word: it is that which allows businesses to expand their services and goods via employing more individuals or offering unique services at a good price. If you are against price supports, subsidies and want them removed from the system so everyone pays the true cost of insurance and health care, then say so. I do. After tort reform. That levels the playing field, puts people on the line for understanding their own health, and starts to remove the incentive for increased bureaucracy which does not get greater accountability. The current system has inflators for reimbursement and the problems of subsidizing the system: no one utilizes medical care in an accountable fashion because ‘the insurance company pays for it’. At some point you reach an equilibrium where what people are willing to pay for reimbursed care is lower than the actual cost of the care, without the system. You will not see more people go broke, you will see medical practices shedding personnel who are used to account for paperwork, thus lowering overhead cost. There are doctors doing this with PRIVATE insurance and PUBLIC insurance: They are no longer willing to take the hit of those overhead costs which eat in to their time of practicing good medicine. Just what will be done with doctors who leave all insurance reimbursement?
At least the Right gets tort reform and limiting suits to reimbursement to correct wrongs. After that neither the Left nor Right truly wants to address the high costs of the system because of government intervention. And if the government can’t ‘fix’ Medicair/Medicaid, VA and Native systems, then why should it be trusted with anything larger?
Anonymous, I’m hearing this morning that this will be an assignment through the teachers – that specific question about helping the President – after he makes the address.
I hope he encourages the students to learn to read and speak well, and excel in math.
I believe you are right. He will not be asking directly.
Z had a link up where the speech and other material was stored. I just went to check again and—POOF–it’s gone.
There was something about having the teachers asking the kids to write down questions and answer questions. One was “what would you tell the president?” My answer would have been “Why don’t you resign save America?” Anybody got school kids that doesn’t mind prompting them? Wouldn’t the leftard teachers have a fit.
Mr Obama is a megalomaniac. Now he wants to inculcate himself into your school children. And with videos. It’s all about Mr Obama. The Obama 24/7 Show. You want to “resist”? Then how about keeping your children home on September 8th?
What I find so funny about this is Not One Public School in L.A. County knows anything about this and has NO PLANS, since they don’t know about it, to have any student particapate. Can’t get involved if it doesn’t take place.
Where do you guys come up with this shit?
You do understand this ‘death book’ was developed by the Bush administration don’t you, dillweed?
Hey anonymouse, get a name and do a little research before spouting off. Bush was NOT our President in 1997 when this shit hit the fan, Clinton was. Bush threw it out and now NObama dug it out of the garbage where it belonged.
Libtards—always Bush’s fault, just ask them.
Ranando: from the MSM and the White House website.
BZ
Yup, the ‘Average American’ is stooopid. You’re believing what Fox tells you to believe again. Get some critical thinking skills.
“Wallace and Towey both claimed that the Bush administration suspended use of the booklet — it didn’t; and Wallace claimed that a VHA document requires doctors to direct veterans to the booklet — it doesn’t.”
http://mediamatters.org/research/200908240024
That’s right, it was the Bush administration that put it out and then determined it needed revision.
BZ,
Reported on KABC here in Los Angeles….Out of the 10 schools they called not one knew anything about this.
Our friends in Palm Springs said the same thing, their child’s school knew nothing about it.
Much to do about nothing, as always.
Amazing. People are upset the President will speak to their kids about responsibility, working hard in school and finishing their education.
These losers have vilified Obama even before he took office and made him look like evil at every turn with hysterical lies.
The fact is they are afraid he will inspire a generation of kids who might go up free from the hate fear and ignorance their parents obviously are teaching them.
You dinosaurs really need to die off soon for this country to move forward.