Death Panels - An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Excerpt from Sarah Palin’s Statement on the Health Care Debate, posted on her Facebook page on Friday, August 7, 2009 at 1:26 pm:

And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.

I googled "death panels", curious after today's visit to the Chute to find out where the term came from and why everybody is so opposed to the idea of end-of-life decision making. I found the above Sarah Palin quote, and read several related reports.

It seems we are so fearful of conversations about death that we bring up highly charged accusations and stories to deflect them. Each person embraces his or her life in a different way. I have a friend who came home from war in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down. He went to law school, got his law degree, and has led a fruitful career and personal life contributing to organizations that support the disabled in both the US and in Vietnam. He chose to embrace his life circumstance and get the most out of his earthly tour of duty. I once had a client in a similar physical situation who wanted only to have enough control of her hands to open a bottle of pain pills so she could take an overdose and end her personal tour. She was not allowed to do that.

Who the hell do we think we are, that we tell people they cannot chose?

I am well acquainted with my mother's quality of life and her living environment - well enough to say that if I am ever in a state that requires similar care, I would like someone to open a bottle of pills for me and help me exit my tour. I am considering dedicating some resources to establishing a legally valid personal exit policy that people can deploy to state what conditions are acceptable - and not acceptable - for the end of their lives. Something, perhaps, that would be evaluated by a death panel to support the implementation of my decision.