- THE PRESIDENT: So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.
LEONHARDT: So how do you - how do we deal with it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that's part of what I suspect you'll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.
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In 1999, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush signed a law establishing procedures for hospitals and physicians to withhold life-sustaining care from patients with conditions deemed hopeless, even over relatives' protests.
Oh my, looks like W is also in favor of a "death panel".
And you're your own grandma.
Not a very classy way to handle your critics... I am reminded all the time to be civil. I take that advise and remember we all are in this together. Oh, course,you could have said worse and it is your site but maybe closing it to comments is after allthe best idea for you.Someone mentioned that a while back.
Please, please, don't describe me as my own grandma. According to the wingnuts, being a grandma will put me directly in the crosshairs of Obama's death panels.
Exactly. Just who do you think is going to be the beneficiary of all these wonderful life shortening new regulations by a government that could get bottled water past the Louisiana border after Katrina.
Do you mean the real "life shortening" regulations Bush put into effect in Texas or the imaginary Obama ones?
I haven't seen the TX regulation you mention, but if it includes NOT connecting a comatose, brain dead person to a respirator/ventilator to please relatives hoping for a miracle, I would be in favor of that. Removing hydration from someone not brain dead but brain injured, so that they suffer a lingering but quicker and more painful death, no, I would NOT support that. You obviously haven't read very much of my blog if you put my voting for Bush in the same box as Obama sycophants who had hoped to absolve themselves and the nation of some past sin by electing him.
To the anti-Bush troll: your information seems a bit odd. Here's what I found on Bush and advanced directives.
"Under the new Texas bill to be signed by Governor Bush, treatment must instead always be provided until a reasonable opportunity has been afforded for transfer of the patient to another physician or health care facility willing to comply with the patient or family choice for life. A physician or health care facility will no longer have legal immunity if it involuntarily denies treatment in such a manner. In order to be immune, a doctor or hospital that has decided to deny life-sustaining treatment-defined as "treatment that, based on reasonable medical judgment, sustains the life of a patient and without which the patient will die"-must provide it while the patient seeks transfer to another doctor or facility willing to respect the patient's right to live. Such treatment must be provided for 10 days, a period that can be extended if a court determines there is a reasonable expectation that a physician or health care facility that will honor the patient's directive will be found if the time extension is granted."
In other words, he seemed to have made it harder for the physician or health facility to end a life, not easier. And even then, signing on or vetoing by a governor or a president isn't the same as what Obama is doing, where he is using Rahm Emanuel's brother's book as his guideline for reducing costs by deny care to the frail and elderly due to life expectancy and usefulness. Obama is actually proposing the legislation (although it's called HR 3200).
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