The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
Some nameless provocateur suggested I weigh in on a piece in the Gospel Coalition Blog, a blog of which I'd never heard, suggesting that Christians should "support the government's effort to assist us in our (end-of-life) planning."
According to the writer, Rob Moll, Medicare regulations set up (and withdrawn) to reimburse doctors for end-of-life planning discussions would not have created death panels and would have been compatible with a long standing Christian tradition of death planning.
Moll writes,
But I'm particularly dumbfounded as to why Christians aren't vocally supportive of these rules. Planning for death has been a main feature of the Christian life among nearly all churches throughout the history of the church.
I'm all for end-of-life counseling, but entirely opposed to the government initiating it or having anything to do with it. What I think some are missing is the concept of "conflict of interest." The government, in superintending Obamacare, will have an interest in controlling costs, therefore it could have a bias toward not prolonging life.
One can scoff at the idea of death panels, but these regs are not the only cause for concern. The stimulus bill included $1.1 billion for funding a Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Some, like Betsy McCaughey, have written that the council is meant to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make decisions about rationing that elected politicians might not want to make.
Many of Obama's health care mentors and Obamacare architects, such as Tom Daschle and Ezekiel Emanuel have written about controlling medical costs through rationing care to (treatment discrimination against) the elderly.
Emanuel said,
Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25 year olds receive priority over 65 year olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.
Moreover, we know that Obama envisions bureaucrats gaining control over all health care treatments, not just end-of-life. Remember his ramblings about just getting doctors together to avoid duplications? "We're going to get these doctors together." he said. Who is we? The government. That's who.
The type of increased government control over health care that Obamacare is designed to achieve will inevitably lead to rationing. Rationing end-of-life care is also virtually inevitable. That means that bureaucrats will eventually have some say in our end-of-life care and maybe a very big say in it -- because they will possibly control the treatments and reimbursements.
I can't imagine how anyone who purports to be horrified at 1984 scenarios isn't mortified with these prospects, irrespective of whether you denominate the offending authority "death panels." If things play out bureaucrats could have great control over the treatment people will receive that will determine whether they live or die.
I have no problem with Obama, or anyone else, Christian or not, advocating that he or family members under his charge, "just take a pain pill." But I have a major problem with vesting such authority in the government, especially a government with a monetary interest in decreasing the costs of care.
Mr. Moll can't imagine why any Christian wouldn't be vocally supportive of the Obama Medicare regulations. Well, I can imagine why anyone, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Jainist, Atheist, or Agnostic would be supportive, but I would disagree with any and all of them. I don't see this as a particularly Christian issue, except that I believe my Christian worldview is compatible with my conservative political views and I believe conservatives should logically oppose empowering government in this way.
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Comments :
Oct '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
They've poisoned the well, Dave. If you try to pick out any laudable portion of the bill (and I am aware of very few of those), you will find it contaminated by the rest of the stinking thing. It needs to be starved, disintegrated, or whatever other appropriate metaphor can be applied to the act of incapacitating or decapitating the monster.
Jul '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
"... every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25 year olds receive priority over 65 year olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years."
And every 25 year old was a fetus.
Jun '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
I've just recently been cooperating in producing reams of Medicare paperwork, with hospital staff that were taking care of my mother. Parenthetically, she's doing well now. She's rather hard of hearing, so it was a lot easier for me to answer the questions, instead of her, and the questions never seemed to end. And every department of the hospital starts over from scratch, it seems. By the end, they must've had a stack of paperwork four inches high. And most of this paperwork was not so that they could provide better care. It was so that on some day, some far off day, they might get paid. If the form's not filled out, forget it. That's not exactly how you want to receive your end-of-life counseling--filling in all the lines and boxes on the form.
Jun '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
Some people have a great deal of faith in government. I have a great deal of faith in people. As you so efficiently penned, in this case the two are mutually exclusive.
Nov '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
You saw the tip of the iceberg. There is no way of accounting for all of the extra work, extra employees, and extra time that is spent on just meeting government requirements in the hope of someday getting paid. Not to mention all the distortions in how medicine is practiced that are required if one wishes to get paid. Obamacare is going to be dreadful, but it is building on decades of ruinous results of the government's involvement in health care.
Jul '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
Given the costs of end-of-life care, any government system of health-care provision - whether it's Obamacare or Medicare as we've known it - will face enormous pressure to reduce care.
Even without end-of-life planning, the Medicare system already encourages doctors and hospitals to withhold the most expensive types of end of life care, by reimbursing them at rates that do not cover their costs.
Ultimately, the only way to deal with this conundrum is to remove government from the health care system entirely and let the elderly and their families make the choice as to whether some more months of life are worth the expense.
A hard choice, to be sure. But one that should never be left to government.
May '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
Unfortunately today's organized religion (particularly 'higher' Protestants such as Methodist and Episcopal) now are often more into social justice than religion.
Jun '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
The church engages in end-of-life counseling to relieve the spiritual suffering and potential guilt that a dying person may have as they get closer to death. Government will engage in end-of-life counseling to discourage the elderly from pursuing treatments to prolong their lives and counsel them that they ought to just stop being a burden to their family and to the state. Thus, as Hannah Arendt has warned us, totalitarian governments make evil a banal bureaucratic exercise. That's what you get with socialism, human beings who become numbers and statistics. Ain't it great?
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
That's well stated, imho.
Jun '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
David Limbaugh
That's well stated, imho. · Jan 10 at 5:23pm
Thank you, sir.
Jun '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
I can't quite put my finger on it, but the comment by Rob Moll has me twisting into a fit. He can't possibly understand Christianity to say what he did, right? I don't know, it just really threw me off. Perhaps during my Catholic upbringing, I missed this particular secret ritual of government-sponsored death planning. He really has conjoined Caesar and God.
Nov '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
In theory, the word "rationing" makes it sound like the government will dole out a few measly crumbs of care for everyone. If true, that would be bad enough, but, in actual practice, rationing means that certain groups will receive no care. Do you smoke? Are you fat? Are you over 65? Are you chronically ill in any way? Are you a member of the Tea Party? Sorry, Bucky, no healthcare for you. And, as time goes by, the number of luckless groups will grow and grow. The order of the day will not be prescription, but proscription. When all is said and done, rationing is just another filthy liberal euphemism.
If you carry Obamacare to its logical extreme, eventually it must collapse in upon itself in a horrible bureaucratic "loop." That means no one will receive any healthcare, because all healthcare-earmarked revenue will be needed simply to meet the payroll and sustain the pensions of ten million new worthless bureaucrats.
In the future, a typical hospital will be a $100 billion complex filled with gleaming, state-of-the-art equipment. There will be administrators on every floor — but no nurses, doctors or technicians. And definitely no patients.
Nov '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
You are right to feel queasy. Moll's article is truly remarkable — a ramshackle construction of sentimental anecdotes (including a long (irrelevant) digression about John Donne) and mushy philosophy, all cobbled together with a lot of glib fast-talk, in order to disguise the fact that his argument is a desperate intellectual 'tap dance" with no doctrinal support whatsoever. In other words, he is blowing smoke like crazy.
Any "Christian" who tries to make Charity (or any other Christian act) a prerogative of the State is a traitor to his faith.
Sep '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
An elderly terminal cancer patient receives counseling from their doctor about the choices that lie ahead. I gather that your position is they should have to pay for this counseling and not their Medicare Ins. Or that the doctor should do this for free. I do not favor the government being involved in health care. The Libs and O favor more government involvement and a single payer system. Do to tax policy and regulations the US has an employer based system that for international competitive reasons is not sustainable and is not efficient at controlling HC costs. I would be interested in knowing what type of system you favor and how do you propose getting from where we are to where you would like to go. This “death panel” issue is a dead horse that needs no more beating or further end of life discussion.
Sep '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
Kenneth: Given the costs of end-of-life care, any government system of health-care provision - whether it's Obamacare or Medicare as we've known it - will face enormous pressure to reduce care.
Even without end-of-life planning, the Medicare system already encourages doctors and hospitals to withhold the most expensive types of end of life care, by reimbursing them at rates that do not cover their costs.
Ultimately, the only way to deal with this conundrum is to remove government from the health care system entirely and let the elderly and their families make the choice as to whether some more months of life are worth the expense.
A hard choice, to be sure. But one that should never be left to government. · Jan 10 at 4:25pm
I regard your point and solution to be right on. However, you must realize the libs would castigate you for being heartless and the GOP would run away from your proposal like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
Lady Kurobara
Any "Christian" who tries to make Charity (or any other Christian act) a prerogative of the State is a traitor to his faith. · Jan 10 at 11:54pm
Lady K: May I have your permission to plagiarize that at some undetermined point in the future w/ a casual footnote: LK?
Aug '10
Re: The Christian Position on Government Mandated End-of-Life Counseling?
This the job of the church. And as to what church ? As my favorite 14 yr old would say : whatever . They have been doing the good works from the start and now govt is trying to banish them. They have the best mission statement, CEO , and tax planning.
Edited on Jan 19, 2011 at 6:38pmLady K ? Do I have to read the Moll thing ? What it say bout my man John (Dean of StPauls) Donne ?
I like to think
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot, ......