MANDATORY END OF LIFE CONSULTATIONS
Bioethics Defense Fund encourages you to educate yourself with the summary below.
Bioethics Defense Fund encourages you to educate yourself with the summary below.You can also READ pages 424-434 of the 1,017 page Obama Administration's Health Care Bill (H.R. 3200) and stay vigilant about this language making its way into compromise bills.
H.R. 3200 gives the government power to require mandatory "advance care planning consultations" for Medicaid recipients to discuss future end-of-life decisions; (pp. 424-434). This mandated consultation may result inactionable medical orders for future medical situations that can not be anticipated at the time the orders were written. Read it for yourself at the link below:
The House version of the Obama Health Care Plan provides:
H.R. 3200 gives the government power to require mandatory "advance care planning consultations" for Medicaid recipients to discuss future end-of-life decisions; (pp. 424-434). This mandated consultation may result inactionable medical orders for future medical situations that can not be anticipated at the time the orders were written. Read it for yourself at the link below:
The House version of the Obama Health Care Plan provides:
- Mandatory "advance care planning consultations" for Medicaid recipients to discuss future end-of-life decisions; (pp. 424-434)
- Such mandated consultations must take place every 5 years ormore frequently if there is a "significant change in the health condition of the individual"; (p. 428, lines 17-25)
- During that consultation, an undesignated physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant "may include the formulation of an order regarding life sustaining treatment"; (p. 429, lines 1-3)
- "Order regarding life sustaining treatment" is defined as an"actionable medical order" that "is in a form that stays with the individual and [is] followed by health care professionals and providers across the continuum of care." (p. 429, line 4-16);
- The order may indicate treatment ranging from "full treatment to an indication to limit some or all or specified interventions" including "the use of antibiotics" and "the use of artifically administered nutrition and hydration." (p. 430, lines 4-17)
- The wording of the bill does not provide that the individual must consent to the "actionable medical order regarding life sustaining treatment."
- The bill is also silent on whether the physician or other health professional writing the order will be your personal health care provider.
Read these provisions of the bill for yourself here:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.
Bioethics Defense Fund
Human Rights from Beginning to End
www.BDFund.org
