LaTi reports (my bold)
Six years after end-of-life planning nearly derailed development of the Affordable Care Act amid charges of "death panels," the Obama administration has revived a proposal to reimburse physicians for talking with their Medicare patients about how patients want to be cared for as they near death.NOTE: I am going to have as a guest on the next Robert Wenzel Show an executive from an acute care provider, who will explain how people will be pushed into the death option. People between the ages of 65 and 70! The show will be the most shocking broadcast I have done to date. I hope to record it in time for this Sunday, if not it will be up the following Sunday.
The proposal, contained in a large set of Medicare regulations unveiled Wednesday, comes amid growing public discussion about the need for medical care that better reflects patients’ wishes as they get older.
Two months ago, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, suggested that Medicare patients should sign so-called advance directives that spell out the care they want if they become incapacitated.
The American Medical Assn. has recommended the Medicare billing change.
The new proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services would not require Medicare patients to sign any order or even to talk with their physicians about end-of-life care.
Rather, the proposed regulation would allow medical providers to bill Medicare for "advance-care planning" should a patient want to have the discussion...
Despite the growing consensus that better end-of-life planning is needed, the new regulation threatens to revive the “death panel” campaign that Republicans successfully used to demonize the federal health law as it was being debated...
Medicare currently provides coverage to more than 50 million mostly older Americans and is projected to grow steadily as baby boomers retire.
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-RW
Any competent physician (or NP, PA, RN, etc) understands the importance of documenting what a patient's wishes would be should he become incapacitated. This is commensurate with one of the pillars of medical ethics, Autonomy ie the right to determine the care one will receive. I submit this is commensurate also with libertarianism, ie the right of owning one's body. Once again, a gross intrusion into the highly personal MD-patient relationship.
ReplyDeleteFully agree. Just another government fix on a broken system caused by previous government interventions.
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