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Title: Depression, disability, and “being a financial burden” could constitute “Lebensunwerte Leben” (”Life Unworthy of Life”) in U.S. Government end of life planning document
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Published: Aug 19, 2009
Author: Bill Levinson
Post Date: 2009-08-19 19:34:37 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 2900
Comments: 3
“The Death Book for Veterans: Ex-soldiers don’t need to be told they’re a burden to society” by Jim Towey in today’s (August 18) Wall Street Journal says, Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.” We downloaded this document directly from the Veterans Administration, and the content suggests that both family finances and depression–a non-terminal illness–could constitute Lebensunwerte Leben, or “life unworthy of life.” Smoke is generally indicative of fire and, although HR 3200 says nothing about mandatory end of life planning, euthanasia, or anything else similar to Germany’s Aktion T4 program–the euthanasia program that served as a precedent for the Holocaust–we have shown that there is indeed fire to go with the smoke. “Your Life, Your Choices” is simply more evidence, and it even suggests that war veterans with depression consider themselves a burden on the society that sent them to war. Here is a screenshot of Page 21 of “Your Life, Your Choices,” downloaded directly from the Veterans Administration. As stated in the Wall Street Journal, this document was withdrawn when the Bush Administration saw content that could have come straight from Aktion T4, but the Obama Administration put it back into service. Note that it invites our veterans to define even non-terminal conditions (such as being in a wheelchair or having depression), to which few if any living wills apply, as “Lebensunwerte Leben.” 
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#1. To: A K A Stone (#0)
AUGUST 18, 2009 Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society. By JIM TOWEY If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end- of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care. Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices." Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician- assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing. "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? One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender. I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices"). This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better. Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages. After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care. If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens. Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.
Lebensunwerte Leben & The Obama Healthcare Plan EXCERPTS: Intire Article at Link Above Now to such fine liberal minds as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, this may all seem like some conspiratorial conservative diatribe about how Obama is a Nazi, so I beat them to it, but beg a rational hearing with explanation. "Nazi Germany" was not 'Nazi Germany' back then: it was a twentieth century Western Hemisphere civilized society, which was reknown for giving us Opera, the Arts, Fine Music and the University. It gave birth to the Social Sciences as well. When talk about 'useless feeders' came up, it was first put in political parlance, and in the discussions about German health care options, tax 'dollars', and effective recovery for Germany. There was not nearly such an outcry in defense of the Jews, who remained 'Lebensunwertes Leben'. How then does this discourse on Nazi Germany relate to the 2009 Obama Health Care Program and why many are so upset about it? There really is a viable comparison, which begins at the foundation: the valuation of Life, and the bringing into view the crossroads for the US as to whether we are a nation that values and holds to "Life for Life's Sake", or "Life for the State's sake", for it means far more than how we handle health care, but what kind of nation we leave to the next generation. We are at that pivot now, and the Health Care bill does indeed have serious issues regarding government funding of abortion, and what is being termed 'end of life counseling ' or planning, and what the bottom dollar is compared to quality and length of life. 'Life Worth Living, Life 'Worthy' The Obama health care legislation challenges the concept of Life in the US on several points: 1. It challenges free enterprise in the Medical Community to make medical decisions without government intervention 2. It challenges individual choice in Medical care 3. It relegates 'end of life' decisions to at this point, governmental observation, although the bill currently allows for the recording of individual preferences 4. It leaves open to serious question any role of the government in deciding what is 'quality life' and what is not. Further more, regarding end of life issues, it includes as possible withdrawals for cost-effectiveness and no other reason: 1. Medical intervention in apnea, cardiac or pulmonary problems 2. the use of antibiotics and 3. the withdrawal of food and water, to hasten death Several problems arise with the reasoning: first, apnea, cardiac and pulmonary problems are often correctable, and their is an age-based bias in assuming that another year of an 80 year old's life is less valuable than that of a 25 year old. That seems to me to be a Civil Rights issue, for I am quite sure that 'slow codes' will be used frequently for the aging, but not for the young. Secondly, there are no definitions but I am sure there will be of what constitutes a severe apneic state, or cardiac or pulmonary problems by the government not individual physicians and caretakers. Are we going to make decisions based on whether the dying person is a Kurt Vonnegut or Pete Seeger? or a criminal? Human nature will, whether we argue the point or not. Thirdly, antibiotics are almost always a quality of life issue not just a length of life issue. Are we going to deny antibiotics to dying AIDS patients? or the elderly with pneumonia? How much will be saved? Do we just stand beside them, coughing and choking and explain what the government is saving with the removal of treatment? Are we going to give them a table with triplex movie screen with pictures of the 'old earth' and sell what's left as soylent green? When the argument becomes one of cost-effectiveness and economics, people and life become commodities, and it is no longer a land of the free, but only a home of the brave. Yet lastly, there is a far greater fear that I believe I share with many: when did we become so merciless to think that we can include the word 'euthanasia' in withdrawal of food and water from a dying person to hasten death? Please understand that is not a painless death , far from it. It is a merciless horrible death. There are three physical things which break most people under strained circumstances, even the young and healthy: 1. Gasping for air where there is none 2. Starving to death 3. Dying of thirst When did we make these things 'medical care'? When I started this column in 2005, Terri Schiavo was being starved and 'thirsted' to death while the whole world watched. Police guarded the ones doing that to her, though thousands stood outside protesting. Today in 2009, we are proposing this as a standard measure for 'end of life' consideration. Changing the Social Order The bottom line is this: we, the people of the United States, regardless of our differences have always held LIFE as the pre-eminent value, and it has made us great among nations. We have led the world in Civil Rights enactments, guarded life, fed life, protected life, promoted life, until recently, and the effects on our society have left us knee deep in blood. 40 million abortions, most without good cause, about 100,000 dead in the last few wars of young men, daily gang and violent deaths, negligent deaths, highway deaths, child deaths because we won't curtail the porn industry, deaths, deaths , deaths and we want to add more. Obama's plan will not just lead to unthinkable frontiers of healthcare, but will radically change both the Social Order and the way we consider life. When our view of Life changes, the quality of life changes. The Medical industry doesn't want less freedom, consumers do not want less freedom, none of us want less freedom or poorer quality of healthcare which goes always with Socialized medicine. It is not a guarantee of the Constitution or federal government, so to some degree we have long ago entered into socialist thinking already. The more we keep government out of decision-making regarding our own lives, the better we are as a people protecting basic first ammendment rights. This is not an argument for abortion choice, for that involves two lives, and life, always life for life's sake needs to be upheld. It keeps us human. It keeps us from destroying ourselves and others. The problem is not liberal nor conservative: the problem is human. Both liberals and conservatives, most, want a solution to people suffering without healthcare. Liberals feel government should step in and fill the gap, conservatives do not believe in people dying wantonly in the streets, they want quality healthcare without government intervention in life decisions and determination, but they want private solutions. This issue needs to be fought on human ground not in the caustic ring of political expediency and namecalling. We start the words but they fall in our mouths. "Repentance" means to 'turn away' or 'to turn around' as in 'to go another way'. We have to admit we have done wrong, and 'go another way', or all our beautiful, gracious words, will only fall on more deaf ears, from all nations, all with a sword in their hand, waiting for the reason they must kill another people. Love doesn't mean never having to say you're sorry, Love means BEING sorry, and so changing that we would lay down our lives that the next genocide would truly meet the great cry of 'Never Again'.
#2. To: A K A Stone (#0)
“The Death Book for Veterans: Ex-soldiers don’t need to be told they’re a burden to society” by Jim Towey
#3. To: A K A Stone (#0)
“Lebensunwerte Leben” (”Life Unworthy of Life”) in U.S. Government end of life planning document
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