Thursday, July 31, 2014

Death panels won't die

Death panels are back...

...if they ever existed in the first place. But the concept lives on in the minds of Obamacare's political opponents.

Here is the latest incarnation of this dubious claim: the government directs cancer physicians refuse cancer treatment to terminally sick cancer patients who are covered by the Obamacare. It is alleged that if a patient, in the opinion of a physician, is unlikely to achieve the remission, why spend more money on this patent's treatment. In other words, a death panel would chose not to continue to treat this patient since nothing would prolong the patient's life.

On other hand, the same people who cry foul on the Obamacare are busy making the access to health care harder or impossible for millions of low-income Americans. Does not take a genius to realize that someone without medical insurance is unable to get the recommended cancer screening to prevent cancer to begin with.

Some opponents of the Obamacare I spoke with readily admit that they protect the principle that everyone is entitled to chemotherapy to prolong life if they so choose regardless of how futile it may be; it's a right to be given a drug (and thus have the government pay for it). How tricky such an argument is when it is applied by the opponent of the Obamacare. If they claim it is such a right, then how conceptually different is the right to be seen by a physician or have the access to a contraceptive medication?

The opponents of the Obamacare appear less certain on the subject of whether such a cancer treatment at any stage of the disease is in best interest of a patient. It is probably true that majority of opponents of Obamacare have not seen severely sick dying cancer patients with falling blood counts left helpless in face of deadly infections or confined to intensive care units wrapped in tubes and pumps, or bleeding, puking, incontinent, and half-out because of high-dose pain meds. Would anyone want to get a drug that will kill? Those opponents of the Obamacare who would still think that those who suggest to stop the torture belong to death panels are clearly not in the know regarding palliative medicine.

It is far easier to stir a controversy to equate futile treatment with rationing than help people get access to health care to maximize quality of life for many Americans. So please, the political opponents of the Obamacare, wise up, for one day some of you will be in that ICU bed wrapped in tubes begging to end prolonging death.