While Democrats were mocking the claim that they seek “death panels,” the administration was proposing a plan to refer elderly or depressed veterans to a suicide organization

When a friend read to me this passage from Jim Towey’s article in the January 18 New York Post, my jaw literally dropped:

This wasn’t the first time the administration tried to surreptitiously advance an end-of-life care proposal. In 2009, the Veterans Administration sought to adopt systemwide an advance-care planning tool, “Your Life, Your Choices,” that asked a veteran was life worth living if he or she couldn’t “shake the blues” or “no longer get outside?”

Many thought it had a “hurry up and die” undercurrent—and for good reason. It referred patients to only one organization for advance-care planning assistance—Compassion and Choices, a group formerly known as the Hemlock Society.

If you’re not familiar with the Hemlock Society, here is Wikipedia:

The Hemlock Society USA was a national right-to-die organization founded in Santa Monica, CA by Derek Humphry in 1980. Its primary missions included providing information to dying persons and supporting legislation permitting physician-assisted suicide. In 1992, following the publication of his book Final Exit, Derek Humphry left the leadership of Hemlock Society USA. In 2003 the national organization renamed itself, and a year later merged itself out of existence, and into a newly formed national organization. Compassion & Choices is a contemporary successor to the Hemlock Society.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 20, 2011 08:16 AM | Send