Posted on 08/16/2009 11:08:02 AM PDT by Maelstorm
As a physician I have talked with people about how they want to be treated at the end of their lives. If they knew they were dying, how much would they want done? Would they want to be at home or at a hospital or in a nursing or hospice facility? How much chemotherapy, resuscitation, diagnostic tests, feeding tubes, etc., would they want? At some point would they just want to be kept from suffering?
I also want to be able to have this sort of conversation for myself. I want eventually to be allowed to die with dignity and peace and without a great deal of medical intervention intended just to forestall death for a few more days or weeks. Some of these things need to be decided before the fact; otherwise medical personnel may be required to give us a lot more “treatment” than we might want.
This sort of discussion is what is included in the current House version of health insurance reform, and it is a far cry from the notion of “death panels” that ex-Gov. Palin and others are screeching about in a cynical and manipulative way. I look forward to the day when we the people no longer tolerate extremist politics and instead demand the kind of rational debate a true democracy requires. We can’t afford to let health care reform be derailed by this sort of divisive foolishness.
-Dr. Joe Douglas
200 Maine Street Suite A Lawrence, KS 66044
(785) 843-9192
http://www.bertnash.org/index.html
August 16, 2009
So the choice is “reform” or “reform”?
That’s not a choice.
“This sort of discussion is what is included in the current House version of health insurance reform”
And he knows this just exactly how? Are we to think he read and understood the bill?
All liberals lie all the time.
But that is the option they wish to provide the choice that is no choice at all.
Yes that would be true. I read a book a few years back on exactly this issue. I can’t remember the name at the moment but it was really eye opening. There was one story where a guy had been getting a prescription for a painkiller but had never stopped getting it refilled. He got to the point where he couldn’t walk and was demonstrating Parkinson’s like symptoms. It wasn’t till the doctor reviewed all the medications that he was taking that he found this out and took him off of it and the man fully recovered.
I agree with Winston.
It comes down to a matter of trust. Who do you trust?
It is really amazing how many in top positions in the field are sexually deviant in some way or another.
This alleged psychiatrist “Joe Douglas” should know better than to ask people for hypotheticals about the distant future. Gee, isn’t it easy for healthy middle-agers to solemnly speculate about the wonderful self sacrifice they will make in 30 years if they should become unhealthy.... Yeah, those are answers you can take to the bank. What a moron.
He’s basically a liar framing the death culture’s position as only seeking mercy for the people at the absolute end of life.
We all know that the death lovers of the left will not stop at that! Gramdma, the mentally ill and handicapped people like Terry S, are goners if the Left gets centralized power over death care. The ‘rational” doc will be able to rationalize all degrees of the death culture for a variety of reasons.
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