Death Panel Idol
Dog days, mid August. Congress is out, health care reform is a hot topic. This is a great time to scare seniors with talk of death panels and euthanasia. These imaginary death panels seem to be the work of Betsy McCaughey, a thinktanker at the right-leaning Hudson Institute.
There is a provision in one of the health care bills that says doctors may be compensated by Medicare for the time they spend counselling patients on end of life decisions like Living Wills, Advanced Health Care Directives and such. It takes an evil imagination to twist a noncontroversial idea – seniors should make end of life decisions ahead of time – into some sinister plot to have the government pick who gets health care or not.
Your Gypsy Chief blogger will be 73 next month. Procrastination has been a life issue with me. But the bullshit being foisted off on seniors by Betsy McCaughey, Sarah Palin, Chuck Grassley and friends didn’t make me scared – it made me mad.
Mad enough to do something about it. First thing is we’re all going to die. Recognize that fact. Make it easier on those you leave behind by making your wishes known now, before you fall into a vegatative state.
Second, I don’t feel that I need counselling by a doctor in order to determine what end of life options are best for me.
For me, a consideration is do I want to live a little longer with tubes sticking out until the money is gone, or would I rather leave something for my kids to inherit.
I am so mad about this death panel stuff that I decided to stop procrasting and make a Living Will. I went to LegalZoom.com . The proces is very easy and straightforward. You can save a partially completed worksheet and return to it later. It took me less than half an hour to get the whole thing done.
That is how I beat the Betsy McCaughey – Sarah Palin – Chuck Grassley death panel.
Two other points to be made. People who deliberately make stuff up like these false death panels should not be considered as having a credible voice in the health care debate. I think that news directors make a huge mistake by allowing folks like Betsy McCaughey to have any air time when they have proved they do not deserve it. News directors do so to ‘present the other side of the story’. But that is just nonsense. The story is do we or do we not want to provide Medicare reimbursement for doctors to consult with patients on end of life decisions like Living Wills.
Final point. People think they can scare seniors by using loaded terms like death panels and forced euthanasia. Not all seniors are dumb enough or so poorly informed as to fall for such tactics.
Posted by Gypsy Chief
Photo Credit: Paula Abdul Death Panel photo is the work of Mike Licht. See http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/
Nice job, Chief. We all have a chance to take just a little control over that one thing none of us can control.
You are so right. Thanks for your thoughts. We should all be thinking about that inevitable day. I will look forward to reading more from you.