Guest Commentary: Say 'No' to ObamaCare Life or Death Decisions Makers     8/21/2009
By Dr. Mark Mostert

Sarah Palin has been criticized for suggesting that the President's healthcare proposals may result in "death panels" affecting chronically sick people, the elderly, or the disabled.

However, Palin's remarks accurately show how some federal healthcare provisions may work if passed into law, because if the government controls healthcare, faceless government officials far from your doctor's office will make your treatment decisions.

A government "panel?" Probably. A government "death panel?" Yes, if that panel decides that your doctor should withhold a treatment that could improve your health, save your life, or keep you comfortable.

I'm sorry to tell you that in some states, we already have anonymous bureaucrats who decide who lives and who dies.

Legally.

A Texas law, the Advance Directives Act, allows hospitals to stop all treatment for some patients because further treatment is considered "futile." "Futile" means that any more treatment is essentially useless and wasteful, because the patient will never get better. Once the decision is made, loved ones are given notice that 10 days thereafter all treatment will stop.

This decision is legally binding even if the family is able and willing to pay for all care themselves, and the law can override any living will the patient may have had, saying, for example, that all treatment should be continued until death.

Here's the worst part: This decision is made exclusively by a hospital committee. Loved ones, nor patients themselves, have any say. Period.

In Oregon, things are equally concerning. Oregon already has a state healthcare system that rations treatments and decides who will receive it. Oregon has also legalized assisted suicide as a healthcare option.

That's where Barbara Wagner found herself - sick in Oregon. Wagner had terminal cancer, and her doctors wanted to give her a very expensive medication that, while not able to make her better, would keep her comfortable for the rest of her life.

The state of Oregon sprang into action: They sent Wagner a letter saying that state healthcare would not cover the medication, because it was too expensive and that it would make no difference to her terminal diagnosis. However, the state wrote, they would be happy to pay for the (very inexpensive) drugs that would help her commit suicide.

Panels making life and death decisions?

They're legal in Texas.

States deciding who gets some treatments and who doesn't? Look no further than Oregon.

If President Obama gets his way, shadowy panels and committees deciding life and death will become national health policy - for all of us in every state.

Dr. Mark Mostert is director of the Institute for the Study of Disabilities and Bioethics (ISDB) and a professor in the School of Education at Regent University in Virginia. For more information about ISDB, please click here. Dr. Mostert is the creator of a powerful website called "Useless Eaters" which "examines disability as a genocidal marker in Nazi Germany."

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