Republicans who attacked health care reform savagely promoted two particularly vicious – and totally false – claims. The biggest, most transparent lie was that reform amounted to a “government take-over of health care,” though on its face, health care remained in the hands of private doctors and for-profit and non-profit insurance companies, like BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, whose policies and costs are nearly identical to those of their private, for-profit competitors.
The second most vicious lie was that the Obama administration intended to establish “death panels” which would limit health care for older patients to hasten their dying.
That outrageous claim is again being circulated as the Obama administration’s new policy rules for insurers that take effect tomorrow are coming into discussion. But now, Americans will get to see first hand more precisely what was so wrongly maligned. When they do, they will see that the voluntary discussions they may seek with their physicians – and may incorporate in their living wills – will be simply helpful discussions of how they may wish to deal with the prospect, or reality, of terminal illnesses.
Many Americans, as they age, have these discussions among friends and families. But discussions with friends who are not doctors are rarely useful in helping to define what types of care and medications are available if we are found to have a terminal cancer – of, say, the brain, pancreas, liver – or some other terminal condition.
Some may wish to receive any and all sorts of care even if they lapse into a vegetative coma and are believed by doctors to have no hope of recovery. Others might wish, in such a circumstance, to decline invasive attempts or technical means to keep them alive artificially if death is certain. Indeed, many patients with terminal cancers seek, at the end stage, a “do-not-resuscitate,” or DNR order; they wish only the strongest pain relievers and water until they die.