True Compassion Advocates

VA’s recommended death book tells vets: “hurry up and die.”

The health care debate has certainly heated up of late, with talk of rationed care for the elderly, death panels, and now, a ‘death book’ for veterans, written by an advocate of both assisted suicide and health care rationing.

Amid the health care reform controversy, most Americans agree that elements within our health care system are broken and in need of improvement. But the discussion of health care reform and end of life wishes should be separated from the kind of bare-bones manipulation and seedy coercion practiced by radical suicide promotion groups. The advancing of assisted suicide as ‘just another end of life choice’ should not, under any circumstances, be slipped into health care reform unnoticed and unremarked upon, hiding amid nice sounding words or innocuous seeming advance directives. The debate should be vociferous and open, detailed and honest. The last few weeks have been quite a start.

The most recent installment of health care/end of life controversy was stirred up by a Wall Street Journal article and Fox News, The Washington Post, and CNN reports about comments made by Mr. Jim Towey, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and founder of Aging with Dignity. http://fns.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/08/23/the-death-book/ Towey, who worked with Mother Teresa of Calcutta for 10 years, spilled the beans on The Department of Veteran Affairs, which recently instructed participating hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians to use a 53 page manual “Your Life, Your Choices” as the preferred and recommended advance directive for 24 million veterans, even those who are not ill or disabled.

According to Mr. Towey, the booklet, which sends a “hurry up and die” message to ill veterans, is “fundamentally flawed” and may facilitate government bureaucrats in ”greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.” Tellingly, the lead author of the workbook ‘Your Life, Your Choices’ is Dr. Robert Pearlman, who has advocated for physician-assisted suicide before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

Mr Towey’s article, published in the Wall Street Journal on August 19th and entitled “The Death Book for Veterans,” reports that “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, various scenarios are listed and users asked to decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html)

“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.””

Towey asks, “When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?” and goes one to wonder: “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.” Indeed, per Towey, when the VA sought to update “Your Life, Your Choices” between 2007-2008, it not only did not include any faith-based groups or disability rights advocates, but in fact listed only one organization as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices“).

Why does all this matter?

Because, the twisted agenda of suicide advocates is seen more clearly through the lens of the seductive marketing of manipulative advance directives such as ”Your Life, Your Choices” (which could be aptly re-named, ‘Your Life, My Choices”), through intentional age-based health care discrimination, and through systematized dehumanization of people with disabilities and serious or terminal illnesses. The core of this debate has very little to do with health care reform as such–and much more to do with preventing a small number of radical suicide promoters from hijacking actual health care reform and replacing it with incentivized victimization of vulnerable ill people.

Good-hearted, intelligent, and well-intended people across the country may disagree about the need for and extent of proposed reforms to our health care system–but most of us want to ensure competent, compassionate, and supportive care for ourselves, our elders, people with disabilities, and the poor. And we know, instinctively, that manipulative tools such as “Your Life, Your Choices” only cheapen the debate and victimize the vulnerable.

True compassion advocates everywhere would do well to join the fray, speaking out against deceptive advance directives such as “Your Life, Your Choices” and the assisted-suicide-light as it appears in some versions of health care reform. We, each of us, must more aggressively advocate for improved education, health care, and support for veterans, seniors, the disabled, and the seriously ill. And we must not allow the public forum to be dominated by those who would victimize vulnerable people to advance their own chilling death-promoting agendas.

What else can we do?

Write letters to the editor, post on related blogs and web sites, share this info with those on your email contact lists, reach out to neighbors and friends in need. Let your local physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes know how you feel. Support organizations such as True Compassion Advocates monetarily and with your volunteer hours. In sum, demonstrate your compassion in action.

For more information about how to protect you and those you love and how to make moral medical decisions, please refer to True Compassion Advocates newly composed brochure and articles on medical decision-making, which can be found in the Resources section, of our web site, under Health Care Choices.

For more information on Mr. Towey’s organization, Aging with Dignity and the Five Wishes (the advance directive he recommends, which honors the inherent dignity of all life), please refer to www.agingwithdignity.org . The full text “Your Life, Your Choices” booklet can be found at http://www.agingwithdignity.org/forms/YLYC_First_edition.pdf

Assisted suicide, End-of-life choices, Health Care Reform, Uncategorized | Eileen | August 31, 2009 8:02 pm