busyIs the Government Going to Euthanize your Grandmother? An Interview With Sen. Johnny Isakson.
Sarah Palin's belief that the House health-care reform bill would create "death panels" might be particularly extreme, but she's hardly the only person to wildly misunderstand thesection of the bill ordering Medicare to cover voluntary end-of-life counseling sessions between doctors and their patients.
This part particularly caught my attention:
It seems to me we're having trouble conducting an adult conversation about death. We pay a lot of money not to face these questions.
Therein lie two crucial and dangerous truths. 1) Americans have a terrible relationship with death. 2) Americans use money to avoid important responsibilities. One result of this is that the #1 death nobody wants -- dying alone in a medical facility -- is the one that almost everyone gets. Because when you aren't on speaking terms with Death, you aren't able to make a comfortable arrangement to be picked up when the party of your body is over, and Death has to come throw you over his shoulder and carry you out. And when you aren't able to speak about death, other people wind up having to make decisions that you should've made yourself, and it tends to add a great deal of extra misery to what is a challenging time already.
We can do better. In this case, I recommend Mexico as an example of a country that has a healthy relationship with death. Their health care system may not be terrific, but they get the concepts that Death can be a gentleman (or a pesky lecher...) and that being dead doesn't remove a person from the family.
Thoughts
August 12 2009, 23:37:55 UTC 11 years ago
Some elders have taking to having "DNR" tattooed on their chest in hopes of dissuading overzealous professionals from violating their desires. It's a good idea; it removes the "I didn't know" excuse.
Re: Thoughts
August 16 2009, 17:01:53 UTC 11 years ago