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Since January of 2005, the New Hampshire legislature has been ping-ponging a bill to address end-of-life care and advanced directives for healthcare.
The bill's text seems to start out innocently enough:
Well, that certainly doesn't raise any red flags. At first blush, one might believe that the House of Representatives of New Hampshire was actually making headway in the protection of the individual's right to receive wanted and necessary care and to ensure that the patient's rights and wishes took precedent in the case of incapacity.
Not exactly.
On May 19, the bill, HB 656, was heard by the Committee of Conference. From there, it is scheduled to be voted on by the full House on Wednesday, May 24. http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2006/hb0656.html
What's troubling about that Committee hearing is that new language, in the form of an amendment, was introduced in the last few minutes and accepted into the bill's docket. This amendment reads just a tad bit differently from that opening declaration:
Does that sound to you like the state of New Hampshire is concerned about your wishes? Or, could it possibly be intended to give a legal pass to hospitals who deny complicated patients ordinary care?
That small cluster of words can easily be construed to mean that a hospice ethics committee would gain the green light to do as they damn well please, whether or not you've directed differently. In sum, if they want to deny you treatment or care, they now have an out.
It's interesting that this particular amendment does not suggest a determination from a doctor or a certification from two doctors are required before a hospital shuts you out. Only the facility's protocol is required.
If accurate, that creates a disaster waiting to happen.
Hospital ethics committees are not groups of doctors who interact with patients, families or caregivers of the patient. Rather, they are people who protect the legal interests of the hospital or nursing home, particularly when disputes over care arise. To a great degree, they mind the company store -- not necessarily the customer.
Putting the power to end the lives of people they don't know, based on cost containment practices or life quality judgments is not only an invasion of the patient's privacy -- it's asinine.
Would you want a stranger, engaged in the business of protecting a hospital's legal interest, deciding whether or not you should be allowed to live? Do you not think those decisions are best left to you and your family?
Apparently, New Hampshire doesn't think so. As far as I can tell, House Bill 656 would soften the path for facilities to impose cost containment and futility practices that rob you of your sovereignty and could leave you for dead.
At least one insider has stated that the Partnership for Caring (a seemingly pro-assisted suicide beneficiary of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, NJ) has had a hand in promoting this act. The Partnership has a long and glorious history of minimalizing terminally people and this nation's elderly -- like so many disposable lighters.
RWJ Foundation helped to fund the Project on Death in America, a group that, in the 1990s, set out to change both public perception and public policy on withholding and withdrawing care from elderly, disabled and terminally ill human beings.
None of this comes as any surprise to the people who have fought for the rights of ailing, elderly and disabled people to receive the healthcare services they want and are entitled to. In fact, we're wondering what took so long.
These days, the value of your life can be defined in how much you cost. The higher the cost, the lower your value. It is then that ethics committees and futile care practices kick in and what you believed was your right is nothing more than a stumbling block. When they don't want to care for you -- they won't.
In New Hampshire, the state laws are barreling closer to this reality. I cannot imagine that the residents of that state would be terribly thrilled to know that they are being viewed as liabilities -- instead of just people. 5-22-06
Pamela F. Hennessy is the Founder of the Partnership for Medical Ethics Reform (www.forethics.com) and volunteered as a representative of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation from 2002 to 2006.
New Hampshire - Legislative Contacts
Senator Judd Gregg (R- NH) 202-224-3324 | 202-224-4952
Senator John Sununu (R- NH) 202-224-2841 | 202-228-4131
Representative Jeb Bradley (R - 01) 202-225-5456 | 202-225-5822
Representative Charles F. Bass, II (R - 02) 202-225-5206 | 202-225-2946
© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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