Obamacare’s covert support of assisted suicide
Guest post by Michael Cahill, Vista Health Solutions
Within the voluminous Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) legislation, if you look closely enough, you can find some interesting things that have been glossed over by the mainstream media. Things like secret abortion surcharges and assisted suicide, just to name a couple.
The controversy over federally endorsed abortion and its hidden surcharges has been well documented in conservative media. But there hasn’t been much coverage of late about the legislation’s covert support for physician-assisted suicide.
Currently, only four states in the country legally allow assisted suicide. Vermont, Washington, and Oregon have unrestricted laws, meaning that the administration of life ending drugs is up to the discretion of the patient and his doctor (also it’s covered by insurance). In Montana, assisted suicide is legal through a court order. In the other 46 states, the practice is illegal and has been for most of the last century.
Section 1553
The piece of legislation in question is Section 1553 of the Affordable Care Act, which reads as follows:
(a) In General – The Federal Government, and any State or local government or health care provider that receives Federal financial assistance under this Act (or under an amendment made by this Act) or any health plan created under this Act (or under an amendment made by this Act), may not subject an individual or institutional health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the entity does not provide any health care item or service furnished for the purpose of causing, or for the purpose of assisting in causing, the death of any individual, such as by assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing.
To break it down, if a terminally ill patient requests that his doctor help him end his life, and the doctor refuses for moral reasons or whatever the case may be, that doctor is protected by federal law against discrimination. This can be a saving grace for doctors who may subsequently be targeted by insurance companies because of their refusal to help patients end their lives.
While this section is likely a relief to many opposed to assisted suicide, at the same time it’s also disturbing. The section essentially accepts that the norm is for doctors to prescribe lethal doses of a medication for a patient if he asks for it. This flies in the face of the more logical option which might be working with the patient to fight the disease or encouraging him to seek a second or third opinion before considering killing himself.
So what does this mean for the future?
The language of section 1553 seems to be intentionally vague. It’s not much of a jump to conclude that it was written with the intention of providing some cover to physicians performing assisted suicides in the states where it’s illegal.
A case arguing as such could very well be taken all the way to the Supreme Court, leading to a Roe v. Wade-type ruling in favor of assisted suicide. Could that be the Obama administration’s goal in including this section? Likely not, but it could still be an unintended outcome of it.
On a different level, it’s also discouraging that the administration chose not to definitively weigh in on the assisted suicide debate at a federal level. Their decision goes against the clear will of the nation, with assisted suicide considered a felony in most states.
Maybe this is because of the president’s personal stance on the issue. In a March 2008 interview, then presidential candidate Barack Obama said that Oregon “did a service” to the country in passing assisted suicide legislation.
He went on to say that while he would be hesitant to legalize assisted suicide nationwide, the United States has to think about these “end of life issues” because of our rising elderly population. Toward the end of the interview he ultimately voiced his support for terminally ill assisted suicide.
In less than six months, the major provisions of the Affordable Care Act will kick in. What the legislation will mean for pro-life Americans has already been reported on extensively. But the question remains, will the worst of those predictions come true? It’s sad to say, but right now things don’t look too hopeful.
Michael Cahill is Editor of the Vista Health Solutions blog. He has a degree in Journalism from SUNY New Paltz and previously worked as a reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal and an editor for the Rockland County Times. Follow him on Twitter at @VistaHealth and @ElectronicMike
[Images via sodahead.com, saschina.org]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Fighting the good fight on this front is very daunting, but it must be done.
If you had a teen or an average friend who was suicidal, how could you convince them that they should seek help? If we allow doctors to kill elderly patients or sick patients, then we have no answer to other people who are depressed and/or suicidal. Depression is not uncommon among people facing serious illness. But we don’t treat depression with death. Death is in fact CONTRAINDICATED. If I were sick and depressed, I would hope to find treatment. Death is not treatment. Not for anyone of any age or any state of development. Many people who imagine they would want to die are saying so out of fear, fear of abandonment, fear of the unknown, fear of the illness itself. Death is not a cure for fear!
I repeat: Death is always contraindicated.
To the Obama-minded people; suicide assistance is prescribed as preventive care cause it costs less then real health care.
I think this was probably added in at the behest of pro-life officials and is not some poison pill or Trojan horse. The real problem on that front in this bill is the overall bureaucratic control, which leads to unprofessional medicine that treats patients as uniform cogs in the machinery of state, not individual people. The UK is experiencing that now. The pressure to legalize assisted suicide will increase due to our inverted population; young people will not want to pay to treat their elders. Fortunately for the older folks they vote more and the successive generations will be smaller and smaller, if trends continue. Who can we thank? Seven men on the Supreme Court and the deaths of 55 million Americans.
As many people know, health care institutions are well underway with efforts to comply with the requirements of Obamacare. There is vastly increased attention paid obtaining to end of life plans. The frequency of Codes being called, and even the lesser “rapid responses” is waaaaaaay down. I am no longer getting regular exercise pushing the med cart all over the hospital.
While abortion exascerbates a very huge problem – it is something like a poor-driver steering his car into an inevitable accident. Costs-are-high has been translated by some to think it is cheaper to be dead than to live, so abortion saves money and euthanasia will too. Is the price tag on life now expressed in $$$ (maybe cents (not sense) too)?
You can see this video clip ; about assisted suicide : http://www.micatholicconference.org/media-gallery/assisted-suicide/
I am on a monthly anticancer shot for as long as it works or for life if it keeps working. I understand that without insurance it is expensive, but considering except for three pregnancies, in all my years I rarely even met insurance deductibles, I feel that I have still paid far more into the insurance system over my lifetime than my cancer has even begun to take out. But, I fully expect with the way our society’s attitudes are changing about our sick, our elderly, our handicapped, and our unborn, that there will come a day when I will get offered pain meds or even “suicide” instead of my monthly shot to control the cancer. I think, with or without Obamacare, it is coming because of how our society is devaluing life.
Thank you for the great video clip, Amir. I am going to forward it to my life-long Catholic mom who has recently talked with me about her support for assisted suicide. I was heartbroken when I realized she was sincere but I didn’t want to argue with her too much about the topic in attempts to not shut her completely down. I was caught off guard, upset and didn’t have an effective argument to share with her. This video will show her how I feel without her feeling attacked, I hope.
The older mom gets the more people she knows who are going through pain and death. I think that what she really fears is the potential pain of her own death and of those she loves. Her heart is in the right place but her logic is warped.
I think I have mentioned on here before the sincere discussions had by a group of my husband’s twenty-something relatives and their friends. They believe communities should have “suicide booths”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_booth. At first we thought they where joking and laughed along with them until we realized that they were 100% serious.
Before hearing these discussions, I don’t think my husband could really relate to what I referred to as the Culture of Death (he is a convert to Catholicism). I see this way of thinking with young people at my job but my husband had not been exposed to it directly.
Two young nieces work in a nursing home. It breaks my heart to hear them discussing the death of an elderly person and talk about all the things the person could no longer do, how they are not helped as quickly as others and adding things like “well, she no longer had quality of life. It was for the best.”
What I really want to scream to these youngsters is, “You arrogant little sh*ts! Who are you to decide whose life is worth living? You are being paid to immediately respond to all residents!!” but I calmly try to talk to them about their way of thinking vs. mine in attempts to deprogram them from the brainwashing they have received their whole lives and currently being pushed on them by the Obama administration.
If things don’t change, I recommend keeping loved ones at the end of their lives with caring family members if at all possible. If not, stay very involved with the facility your loved one is in.
Is the price tag on life now expressed in $$$ (maybe cents (not sense) too)?
Unfortunately, John, I believe so. ):
hi Prax’
was thinking: does viability = liability? And are we to envision God not as Abba/Father but as ‘THE INSURANCE MONSTER IN THE SKY’?
LOL, John. Unfortunately, that’s how our Fearful Leader and his Infatuated Followers want us to envision Our Father.
I’m going to buck their pressure. I hope all is well with you.
Here’s a link to a medical ethics blog – several states have allowed, or have talked about, physician assisted suicide. This protects doctors who don’t want to be involved:
http://www.medicalethicsandme.org/2012/07/facts-fears-protections-of-conscience.html
Gee golly, I feel better already Ex. Not.
I have so much trouble forming an opinion on assisted suicide, I go back and forth on it over and over.
That being said, it’s good that there is protection in here for doctors that don’t want to get involved. I think this article is making some baseless assertions, like that this legitimizes assisted suicide as “the norm”. No, it really is just literally saying that physicians do not have to participate if anyone legalizes or wants assisted suicide.
For all those who think assisted suicide and/or euthanasia and withholding of treatment is alike: There is a big difference between actively causing death and the patient saying “enough is enough, no more treatment, just keep me comfortable.” To say no more machines, chemo, surgeries, just let nature take it’s course, is not assisted suicide. It is a lot muddier of course if we start considering food and water as treatment.