To the Editor:
Re “Obama Institutes End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir” (front page, Dec. 26):
The new Medicare regulation covering physicians’ discussions with their patients about end-of-life issues is once again under attack by right-wing ideologues. The new rule is specifically designed to give patients the opportunity to explain their wishes about end-of-life care to their personal physicians. It represents a thoughtful and valuable step toward allowing patients to control decisions about their own health care.
Yet Elizabeth D. Wickham of LifeTree obstinately and perversely insists, “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”
This is an astonishing distortion, comparable to the canard last year that the Obama administration was planning “death panels” to decide who was worthy to receive health care.
Peter Rogatz
Port Washington, N.Y., Dec. 26, 2010
The writer is vice president of Compassion and Choices of New York, which counsels patients on end-of-life care and choices.
To the Editor:
It strikes me odd that counseling on end-of-life care (advance directives), a service that I have provided perhaps a thousand times over my 35-year medical career, is front-page news.
The plan by Medicare to reimburse for the service will not change the content of the doctor-patient discussion. Whether it changes the frequency of the discussions remains to be seen.
Charles Cutler
Norristown, Pa., Dec. 26, 2010
The writer is an internist.
Note from KBJ: Let's go back to an earlier debate. Those who favor abortion rights opposed legislation that would have required doctors to discuss abortion alternatives with pregnant women. All the doctor would have done is discuss alternatives. Perhaps this will make progressives understand opposition to the regulation that will encourage doctors to discuss advance directives. The fear in the case of abortion was that doctors would pressure pregnant women. The fear in the case of advance directives is that doctors will pressure the aged and sick.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 