Margaret Dore and Dawn Eskew Take the Lead Against Flawed Hospice Act

The "Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act," bills H.R. 1676 and S. 693, were proposed in 2017 and viewed as noncontroversial.  In July 2018, H.R. 1676 passed the House. The bill was then received in the Senate and transferred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which was also considering S. 693.

A week later, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) issued a portfolio highly critical of the Medicare hospice benefit. This alerted Dore to some of the bills' problems.

Problems with the proposed bills include:

• They do not require patients to be “terminally ill,” which is an eligibility requirement for hospice under Medicare. If the bills are enacted, this omission will create confusion in the law and/or undermine laws designed to prevent patient harm and fraud in the Medicare program.

• The bills describe hospice and palliative care as a benefit for patients and their families, who can have divergent interests. Patients may want to get well, while their families may want inheritances. This is a fundamental problem with the bills, that as written, they serve two masters. 

* In early October 2018, Dore, assisted by Dawn Eskew of New York Against Assisted Suicide, went to the US Capitol with a formal analysis of the bills' problems. The staff person at their first appointment told them that no other visitor had expressed opposition to the bills.

Margaret Dore and Dawn Eskew Take the Lead Against Flawed Hospice Act

Margaret Dore and
Dawn Eskew

The "Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act," bills H.R. 1676 and S. 693, were proposed in 2017 and viewed as noncontroversial. 

In July 2018, H.R. 1676 passed the House. The bill was then received in the Senate and transferred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which was also considering S. 693.

A week later, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) issued a portfolio highly critical of the Medicare hospice benefit. This alerted Dore to some of the bills' problems.

Inspector General Slams Hospice

https://oig.hhs.gov/newsroom/media-materials/2018/hospice/anr-transcript.pdf

(Washington D.C., Tuesday, July 30, 2018) - Hospice use has grown steadily over recent years, with Medicare paying $16.7 billion for 1.4 million beneficiaries in hospice care in 2016. A decade before, in 2006, those numbers were $9.2 billion for fewer than 1 million beneficiaries....

In a new hospice portfolio released by the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG), the agency found that hospices do not always provide needed services to patients and sometimes provide poor quality care.

OIG also found that patients and their families and caregivers do not receive crucial information to make informed decisions about their care. And taxpayers are bankrolling much of this poor care and fraud through the Medicare hospice benefit....

Bi-Partisan Resolution Opposing Assisted Suicide Introduced in Congress

By Rebecca Duberstein

Congressman Wenstrup

Yesterday on September 27, Congressman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) held a press conference announcing the introduction of a resolution (H.Con.Res.80) expressing the sense of Congress that assisted suicide “puts everyone, including those most vulnerable, at risk of deadly harm and undermines the integrity of the health care system.”