Death panels coming soon to American socialized medicine

The federal government is becoming increasingly inhumane and vicious, and it needs to be addressed. We’re not living in a Constitutional Republic and we can’t keep fooling ourselves that we are. Republicans were mocked for bringing up the idea of death panels after the passage of Obamacare, but it turns out they’re real. End of life is a discussion to be had with the family, not for your doctor or government to decide. This isn’t an issue of humanity or compassion, but about cutting Medicare costs by avoiding long term care. ~ ML

Truth Will Out. If Medicare is planning to pay doctors for 'end of life' counseling, then the reality not only encompasses death panels, but a more sinister, yet lucrative, scheme enters the fray...so goes socialized medicine.

NYSlimes: Medicare, the federal program that insures 55 million older and disabled Americans, announced plans on Wednesday to reimburse doctors for conversations with patients about whether and how they would want to be kept alive if they became too sick to speak for themselves.

The proposal would settle a debate that raged before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, when Sarah Palin labeled a similar plan as tantamount to setting up “death panels” that could cut off care for the sick. The new plan is expected to be approved and to take effect in January, although it will be open to public comment for 60 days.

Medicare’s plan comes as many patients, families and health providers are pushing to give people greater say about how they die — whether that means trying every possible medical option to stay alive or discontinuing life support for those who do not want to be sustained by ventilators and feeding tubes.

“We think that today’s proposal supports individuals and families who wish to have the opportunity to discuss advance care planning with their physician and care team,” said Dr. Patrick Conway, the chief medical officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which administers Medicare. “We think those discussions are an important part of patient- and family-centered care.”

Gotta love (and I mean despise) how they turn this around on 'patient and families' decisions, while these medical bureaucrats line their pockets under the regime's directive of rationed care.

As a big part of the American population ages, and more people live longer with grave illnesses, a growing number of people want to be able to talk over options with their doctors — deciding, for example, whether they want to die at home or in the hospital, or under what circumstances they would want life-sustaining treatment. ...

Burke Balch, the director of the National Right to Life Committee’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics, said his organization objected to Medicare’s plan under current circumstances. “We feel there is pervasive bias against treatment that is occurring in advance care planning that involves nudging individuals to reject lifesaving medical treatment,” he said. He said such pressure on patients was “motivated in large part by a desire to cut health care costs.”

Mr. Balch said his organization was trying to find a congressional sponsor for a bill that would instead direct Medicare to produce materials about end-of-life decisions that reflect a range of views, including those “concerned with protecting people’s right to treatment.”

Elderly Americans should absolutely be able to discuss options with their doctors. The same should apply to any American confronting life-sustaining treatment. But the final decision on one's natural mortality should be left up to the individual patient, not defined from on high and filtered down by a nudge.

The desire to cut health care costs was the original concern of all parties. But We as a People should have known better than to ask an increasingly all-powerful, centralized government to 'fix it'. Because unfortunately, a statist Democratic government taking over the American health care industry has done nothing to curb these costs. On the contrary, the industry has become more broken and corrupted as cost continue to rise.

As a final thought, it boggles the mind to no end that the most vulnerable among us at both ends of life's spectrum are constantly targeted by the left; yet, those able-bodied in the middle, who can do but would rather not for welfare's luxury, must be endlessly subsidized. So goes socialized medicine in the welfare state...lunacy.