Republican Richard 'Doc' Hastings Pulls the Euthanasia Rabbit Out of the Hat

The congressman for my district, District 4 in eastern Washington State, is Richard 'Doc' Hastings. Hastings, despite his nickname, is no doctor. His biography says he, "studied business administration at Columbia Basin College and at Central Washington University." Doc's lack of medical expertise hasn't stopped him from waxing poetic on health care reform. Like his fellow Republicans, Doc is against anything the Democrats may be for. At a Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce lunch on Wednesday, August 12th, Hastings responded to a question about how health care reform proposals will affect seniors by saying, "The biggest issue is the euthanasia part of this. If they are mandated to have euthanasia consulting ... I'm not for anything mandatory." You mean like seat belts, Doc?

The fact that there is no "euthanasia" consulting, mandatory or otherwise, seems to have escaped Doc's notice. Republicans, looking for things to scare us poor old folks with, found a provision on end-of-life care counseling in Section 1233 in the health bill passed by three House committees. The original provision on end-of-life planning was inserted in the Social Security Act by George H. W. Bush in 1990, and covered things like living wills, and durable powers of attorney, only meeting with a doctor to discuss such matters wasn't covered for seniors under Medicare. The new health care bill would have Medicare cover it. Scary, huh?

Where you hear Republicans coming up with this kind of malarky, you've got to ask,

Killing Grandma

In fact, section 1233 of the House bill would allow Medicare for the first time to cover patient-doctor consultations about end-of-life planning, including discussions about drawing up a living will or planning hospice treatment. Patients would, of course, seek out such advice on their own -- they would not be required to. The provision would limit Medicare coverage to one consultation every five years.

But that's not what the Republicans are telling you.

Former Republican lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey said on a radio show on July 16, that she had read the health care bill and discovered that "Congress would make it mandatory... that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into hospice care... all to do what's in society's best interest... and cut your life short."

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) put out a statement on the section of the bill in question, Section 1233, that said, "This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."

And then there's Rush Limbaugh. Here's what he said on his July 28th radio show, “People at a certain age with certain diseases will be deemed not worth the investment, and they will just as Obama said, they’d give them some pain pills, and let them loop out till they die and they don’t even know what’s happened." Well, Rush is someone we've got to pay attention to when it comes to popping pills.

End-of-life planning is critical. Everyone should be knowledgeable about things like directives to physicians/living wills, do not resuscitate orders, medical powers of attorney, and the like.

It's completely irresponsible of Republicans to fear monger about this.