Showing posts with label Compassion and Choices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Compassion and Choices. Show all posts

Monday, December 1, 2014

Compassion & Choices has a New Campaign to Reduce Patient Choice: Be Careful What you Sign.

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA

Last week, the deceptively named euthanasia promotion group, Compassion & Choices (C & C), announced a new campaign to reduce patient choice in healthcare.*

C & C wants to increase the enforceability of health care directives, but only for those that refuse treatment. C & C wants a health care provider who doesn't follow the directive, to not get paid. The problem is that you could get stuck with what you thought that you wanted and not be allowed to change your mind. Consider this example:

You signed a health care directive stating that you do not want "artificially-provided" food and drink, for example, via an IV, nasal tube or stomach tube.

You're in an accident, which renders you unable to personally direct your health care and unable to eat and drink. The healthcare facility and the family member in charge of your care want to give you food and water through "artificial" means. The facility thinks that you will need it for a short time and then recover.

But, if the healthcare facility does this under C & C's proposal, it will not get paid.

A few years ago, the owner of an elder care facility told me about one of its residents. He was an older gentleman who was a slow eater, but he had never choked or aspirated on his food. His doctor arranged for a swallow test, which he failed. To prevent aspiration, the doctor said "Nothing by mouth." The man had previously signed a health care directive saying that he would not want artificially provided food or water. So this meant nothing at all. Moreover, the man's son sided with the doctor.

Over the next few days, the man said that he was hungry and that he wanted something to eat, until he got too weak to say anything at all.

He was not allowed to change his mind and it was a horrible awful death.

So much for compassion and choice.

Be careful what you sign.

Advance directives are dangerous when used to refuse treatment or care. It's better to leave that up to your trusted agent to make decisions in the moment.  Margaret Dore is an attorney in Washington State and President of Choice is an Illusion

* C & C's new campaign "to put a stop to unwanted medical treatment."

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Barbara Coombs Lee Renews Plea to Eliminate Oregon Reporting Consistent with Elder Abuse

Today, Barbara Coombs Lee, President of Compassion & Choices, published a blog on Huffington Post arguing that reporting for Oregon's assisted suicide act is no longer needed.[1]  This is the same claim that Compassion & Choices made in Montana before its proposed bill to legalize assisted suicide was defeated last February.

The reporting in question is consistent with elder abuse, i.e., of people with money.  This quote is from my memo against Compassion & Choices' bill, SB 167:

"Doctor reporting is . . . eliminated.1  The former Hemlock Society, Compassion & Choices, claims that this is because Oregon’s reporting system has “demonstrated the safety of the practice.”2  To the contrary, Oregon’s reports support that the claimed safety is speculative.  The reported statistics are also consistent with elder abuse.  No wonder Compassion & Choices wants the reporting system gone."

To view the entire memo, click here. 

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[1]  Barbara Coombs Lee, "What We Know From Oregon's 'Death with Dignity' Experiment," Huffington Post, September 10, 2011 ("Bureaucratic paperwork has provided important data demonstrating the safety of aid in dying [assisted suicide] . . .").  To view her post, click here.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Emperor Has No Clothes: "VSED"

Euthanasia proponents have a new campaign promoting starvation and dehydration.  VSED: "voluntarily" stopping eating and drinking.  Below, Kate Kelly provides a real life example:  "I watched her suffer."

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Mild stroke led to mother's forced starvation 

By Kate Kelly,  edited by Margaret Dore.

I watched an old woman die of hunger and thirst.  She had Alzheimer's, this old woman, and was child-like, trusting, vulnerable, with a child's delight at treats of chocolate and ice cream, and a child's fear and frustration when tired or ill.

I watched her die for six days and nights.

I watched her suffer, and I listened to the medical practitioners, to a son who legally decided her fate, and to an eldest daughter who advised him and told me that the old woman, my mother, was "comfortable," except when she was "in distress," at which times the nurses medicated her to make her "comfortable" again.

I watched the old woman develop ulcerations inside her mouth as she became more and more dehydrated; the caregivers assured me these were not painful.

I listened to her breathing become more and more laboured, as her lungs became congested from the morphine administered every three to four hours, and later every hour.

Friday, June 17, 2011

A Response to The Nation: Legal Assisted Suicide is a Recipe for Abuse; Health Care Providers are Empowered to Steer Patients to Suicide

Yesterday, NPR and The Nation featured a pro-assisted suicide commentary by Ann Neumann.[1]  Her commentary overlooked gaps in the Oregon and Washington assisted-suicide laws.  She uncritically accepted Compassion & Choices's marketing claims that it promotes patient choice for "terminal" patients.  This blog presents the other side.

A Recipe for Abuse

Physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington have gaps that put patients at risk.[2] The most obvious gap is a lack of witnesses at the death.[3] Without disinterested witnesses, the opportunity is created for someone else to administer the lethal dose to the patient against his will. Even if the patient struggled, who would know?