Skip to main content

End of life counseling: Resolute Obfuscation strikes out again

Posted by Homegrown Boy:

Section 1233. Kind of an Orwellian tinge to it.

Well it is Orwellian for it refers to the end of life counseling sick seniors will get from the state run medical society if it passes. (cmon angry Brooks Brothers mobsters – make my day)

It refers to financial incentives for agreeing to die.

Please note the well to do with educated kids will be there to intervene but the poor and uneducated will be told it’s all good and the plug will get pulled.


Utter horseshit, and Nancy Willing has already replied to it there.

On the off chance, however, that HGB is truly just ignorant and not posturing with talking points, let's visit Thaddeus Pope at Medical Futility Blog and find out what the last decade of research into end-of-life counseling has actually found:

Peer-reviewed, published studies [are[ establishing that end-of-life consultations improve care. Among other points made in the linked articles:

End-of-life discussions decrease suffering and distress for patients and loved ones

Hospice patients live longer

Inability to participate in treatment decisions can cause patients uncertainty and distress

87% of patients say they “want as much information as possible”

Patients want doctors to communicate with them about their treatment options


There are--as I make the count--four ways HGB could choose to react to the information that his beliefs are not upheld by the research:

1) He could, in the face of new data, modify his beliefs. [Did I mention this was the least likely outcome?]

2) He might challenge the reliability, validity, or objectivity of the studies. [But to do that--rather than just to make some vague ideological point that he doesn't trust liberal academics--he would not only have to link through multiple times, read the studies, and then educate himself on what reliability and validity mean as statistical terms.]

3) He might make dark references to the fact that the government will use thought-wave transference and kidnapping of family members to influence doctors who have cared for these patients for years into being willing to urge them just to pull the plug so that they can get their death bonuses and pay for their new Mercedes.

4) He could just ignore the fact that somebody challenged him with data and keep talking louder and louder.

Point of clarification: the fact that I am pointing out that end-of-life counseling in the current versions of the health insurance reform bill is not a dire government plot to kill granny is not to be construed as an endorsement of the bill. It is to be construed as a statement that when I oppose provisions of the bill, or the process by which it is being crafted, I will try to do so using actual facts instead of shit I just made up.

Comments

Nancy Willing said…
Just looked back over at the RD site and it looks like Copeland has bought into the machiner rather than expound the truth.

This will carry over with him into any campaign he should aspire to win.
Hube said…
But even some Dems are worried about the financial incentives in that section.

And while I concur about your analysis of "end-of-life" consultations, I must say I am flummoxed by your seeming non-chalant attitude that the government would be involved in such ... and also considering some of the characters in Obama's admin.
Hube said…
Oh, really Nance? Will it follow Copeland around? I wouldn't talk about "buying into" anything if I were you, considering the horseshit posted on your site on a regular basis. Cripes.
Mike W. said…
I'm with Hube. I don't like the financial incentives for doctors that's attached to the end of life counseling part of the bill.

The government need not be involved in that at all, as it's something that should be purely between the physician & patient.

That said, the more vocal opponents of Obamacare are turning this into something it's not. It's no evil government plot to kill off the elderly.

As a comparison, should doctors be given a financial incentive to insist on abortions? Of course not. I don't want the government giving financial incentives that pressure physicians into particular methods of care.
Mike Vine said…
"Point of clarification: the fact that I am pointing out that end-of-life counseling in the current versions of the health insurance reform bill is not a dire government plot to kill granny is not to be construed as an endorsement of the bill. It is to be construed as a statement that when I oppose provisions of the bill, or the process by which it is being crafted, I will try to do so using actual facts instead of shit I just made up."

But the government doesn't mind using shit they just made up!

Forward Vision @
www.mikevine.com
But the government doesn't mind using shit they just made up!

I have always said I have higher standards than the government.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?