The VA's 52 Page End of Life Counseling Document: Death Panels at the VA Hospital

"Your Life, Your Choices” is the 52-page document defining end of life counseling at Veterans Hospitals funded by the federal government. The document was approved under the Clinton administration, extracted by the Bush administration, and reinstated under Obama. Jim Towey of the Wall Street Journal examined this document, and he came up with the conclusion it forces healthcare providers to work with patients to determine if life is worth living. (In other words, is your life worth continuing to be funded by the taxpayers of the United States.) Here’s what Towey writes:

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.

Now the government looks to set up the same end of life counseling in HR3200, and Obama seems quite content to lie about it, despite the government’s track record at the VA. If you want to know what end of life counseling is, there is not a better example than the VA Hospital. It costs money to keep you alive—let’s promote death to veterans who have given so much. What a government!