I read with a little skepticism and a lot of horror a letter written by Gloria Danna Brooks who is reportedly the President & CEO or Arbor Hospice.
She started her letter stating that she was writing on behalf of the thousands of patients, their families and community members that Arbor Hospice serves each year in southeast Michigan.
Hospices have an ancient history - originally they meant a house of shelter or rest for pilgrims especially one kept by a religious order. An additional meaning is used in the United States - it is a health-care facility for the terminally ill that emphasizes pain control and emotional support for the patient and family, typically refraining from taking extraordinary measures to prolong life.
Hospice also refers to a similar process carried out at home.
It is a necessary service.
It can be carried too far - especially by persons who have an interest in turning a profit from it.
Having said that - Ms. Brooks cannot speak on behalf of anyone but herself but, I suppose, she could also speak for her company and she did.
She went too far, however. In her first paragraph she wrote about ‘recent news’ of Barack Husein Obama’s decision to disallow advance care planning as part of the Health Care Bill. He reversed himself quite some time ago and that was why many Republicans voted in favor of the bill - because that item was removed.
But…what actually happened recently was that someone actually read the Health Care Bill - and you know what? Obama had not removed it. It was still in there in black and white. The Representatives and Senators - as usual - did not read what they had voted on because, as they like to say, ‘it was just too big.’
He had to then attach a rider in order to disallow the item he had allowed after promising not to allow it.
In a nation with an abortion rate of over 800,000 per year (more than half are for economic reasons and a quarter for ‘lifestyle’ reasons) it is hard enough to get born - why are people like Ms. Brooks so keen on making it easy to die? It’s profitable, that’s why.
Hospice is important - decisions need to made at the end sometimes that are heart rending and filled with woe - they cannot be sugar coated by a three page, color glossy brochure telling you otherwise.
Let me use her words to explain one the main product her company offers, “…, determining when it is time to stop fighting…”
And who has given her the right to determine that? A hospital billing department that wants the bed? A tax-exempt hospital that decides it has spent enough on care and needs a little left over for the investors - or at least a new condo for the CEO?
It is true that our society is waiting for doctors to bring this up - to address the insane type of situation which occurs when a doctor walks into the room of a patient who has just suffered a stroke at the age of 83 and announces that they are going to work with the patient to get them back where they were. That’s a problem at the medical school - it cannot be solved by a ‘Final Solution’ cooked up by hospital administrators and government bureaucrats.
This government cannot protect our own borders. It cannot even keep an orderly banking system. It cannot stop the flow of illegal drugs. Do you think it will do better with ‘end of life care counseling’? What if the system is abused? This government cannot even guarantee safety for foster children in its care - do you think they are going to care for the elderly like family does?
No.
They won’t.
That is the reason the phrase ‘death panels’ has been used. There is really no other way to describe it.
When doctors and nurses and hospital administrators and government bureaucrats get together to determine when to offer these services who do you think will benefit from their decisions? It is a money making proposition the way that Ms. Brooks has put it so my question is a fair one.
Placing this option as a government activity is insane. No matter what Ms. Brooks says it does devalue human life.
‘End of Life’ counseling is the same as most ‘Family Planning Counseling’. It’s an excuse. A way out. But - after the fact - one finds there is no way out. After all - no one gets out of here alive.
I am glad the provision was struck from the Health Care Bill - I hope and pray the entire Health Care Bill will go the same way specifically because of what happened with this one item.
They are in too much of a hurry and too many people are going to get hurt. Too many bad people are going to profit from bad things. It is a sign of a decaying society that does not have time for the sick and aged and must find a way to kill them off just as quickly as possible.
Who will have these conversations for the terminally insane? Shall we clear the mental hospitals and old age homes and hospitals the same way they did in Germany prior to World War II? They did it to save food, to save money to build weapons to fight and kill.
We have plenty of food. We make the money. We have so many weapons we sell them and we use them when we want. Our nation kills when it pleases.
It looks like it is about to turn on itself. First the babies - and then the old - each generation less and less. It is a culture of death.
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