Obama Administration: Depressed and Disabled Veterans Should Consider Forgoing Medical Care

Obama Administration: Depressed and Disabled Veterans Should Consider Forgoing Medical Care
Depression, disability, and “being a financial burden” could constitute “Lebensunwerte Leben” (Life Unworthy of Life) in U.S. Government end of life planning document
H/t …israpundit
“The Death Book for Veterans: Ex-soldiers don’t need to be told they’re a burden to society” by Jim Towey in today’s (August 18) Wall Street Journal says,

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

HERE is the PDF for “Your Life,Your Choices”
We downloaded this document directly from the Veterans Administration, and the content suggests that both family finances and depression–a non-terminal illness–could constitute Lebensunwerte Leben, or “life unworthy of life.”
Smoke is generally indicative of fire and, although HR 3200 says nothing about mandatory end of life planning, euthanasia, or anything else similar to Germany’s Aktion T4 program–the euthanasia program that served as a precedent for the Holocaust–we have shown (http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=16320) that there is indeed fire to go with the smoke. “Your Life, Your Choices” is simply more evidence, and it even suggests that war veterans with depression consider themselves a burden on the society that sent them to war.
Here is a screenshot of Page 21 of “Your Life, Your Choices,” downloaded directly from the Veterans Administration. As stated in the Wall Street Journal, this document was withdrawn when the Bush Administration saw content that could have come straight from Aktion T4, but the Obama Administration put it back into service. Note that it invites our veterans to define even non-terminal conditions (such as being in a wheelchair or having depression), to which few if any living wills apply, as “Lebensunwertes Leben.”

The Death Book for Veterans ( as discussed above at the top link)
The Wall Street Journal
By JIM TOWEY
If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“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.
I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update “Your Life, Your Choices” between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices”).
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.
Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called “Five Wishes” that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA’s document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.
After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.
If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on “Your Life, Your Choices.” He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.

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Wild Thing’s comment…….
Started under Clinton. Killed by Bush. Reinstated by Obama. Oh, how compassionate are liberals, pulling the plug on war heroes.
“Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices”
Obama is EVIL, and the most dangerous man in America.
Just plain sick. Liberals have no value for life except thier own. Obama’s socialist medicine will destroy the desire to fight for life for many people. There is a HUGE difference between a family working this out with their doctor, and the federal govt making this mandatory.
Government-run health care is NOT constitutional. Period!
Add in to all of this if they force this on all of us we need to absolutely DEMAND that Obama and his wife and the Senators and Congress…..all politicans have to be under the SAME LAWS WE HAVE TO BE. This has got to be and or else thing. DAMG Obama and those that think they can live under different laws and bills passed than we the people. See how oothe sickly and those that are not well like it, such as Byrd, Kennedy, Specter. Let’s see how they embrase this POS bill, this deathcare bill of Obama’s.
Obama and his ilk are exactly what our Founding Fathers were worried would one day happen TO our country and now it has. The President and politicans are not kings of our land but work for us.
The scary thing is depression can MAKE life feel like it’s not worth it. The LAST thing someone who is suffering from clinical depression should be told is that they are worthless to society — and they should NOT be making decisions like “end of life care” while they are still suffering from any sort of acute phase of depression/mental illness (and expense). When a person is like this, they need to be told life is worth it., to get real support from people that care about them, not some death warrant from freaking Obama.
Deny our Veterans critical care Obama and you’re denying the blood, sweat and tears that bought this nation it’s freedom!!
I never, in my wildest dreams, think that there would come a day such as this. Serve your country, get served with this. WAKE UP AMERICA!
These people running our government are sick and heartless! I am so mad I can’t see straight. We should print out a bunch of these things to hand out to people at the townhalls all over the country!! Let them see just how despicable Obama and the democrats are!
There is a “Right to Life”,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
…….and they’re attacking that, saying “We can’t afford it!”
HOW DARE THEY do this to our Heroes, our Veterans, and to our country. We would NOT have had the America we have had if it weren’t for our Veterans!!!!!!! Obama HATES America!
We don’t need the government instructing us on how to ‘evaluate’ our lives and we are not going to stand by while Obama encourages our veterans to die!!

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….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67