I’d meant to repost this from Conservatives4Palin yesterday, but I got distracted; I still wanted to mention it here as well, though, because it’s important. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jim Towey has done our country a service (in a piece linked yesterday by Sarah Palin on her Facebook page) by calling attention to a document recently re-promulgated by the Obama administration’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs called “Your Life, Your Choices.” This is a 52-page document for end-of-life planning which was first drafted by the Clinton administration—by an advocate of physician-assisted suicide and health-care rationing, Dr. Robert Pearlman. When the Bush 43 administration got a look at it, they ordered the VA to stop using it; as Towey describes it,
“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, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”
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.”
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
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. . . .
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable.
In my book, George W. Bush did the only decent and honorable thing in pulling this invidious document; for the Obama administration to start using this again with VA patients—all patients, mind you, not even just those who are clearly dying—is nothing short of despicable. Thank you, Mr. Towey, for writing about this; and thank you, Gov. Palin, for using your platform to call it to our attention.