Friday, October 19, 2018

Dore Memo to US Senate HELP Committee: Vote No on Bill S. 693

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA

For a summary sheet including a similar House bill (H.R. 1676), click here. For a pdf version of this memo, click here.

I.  INTRODUCTION

I am an elder law attorney and president of Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia.[1] Formed in 2010, Choice is an Illusion fights against assisted suicide and euthanasia throughout the U.S. and in other countries.[2] We also fight against hospice and palliative care abuse.

S. 693, the Palliative Care and Hospice Education & Training Act," amends the existing Public Health Service Act to require financial support for “Palliative Care and Hospice Education Centers.”[3] This is a new program, which will include direct patient care.[4]

Existing federal palliative care programs, such as the Medicare hospice benefit, are plagued by fraud, poor quality care and a gross waste of taxpayer money.[5] S. 693 must be rejected unless problems with existing programs are resolved; Congress must not throw good money after bad. The bill must also be rejected for the reasons set forth below. 

Monday, July 30, 2018

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....

Thursday, September 28, 2017

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.”

Thursday, September 14, 2017

U.S. House Votes to Repeal D.C.'s Death With Dignity Law (Assisted Suicide & Euthanasia)

Rep. Tom Graves
To view the full article, click here:

By Jenna Portnoy, The Washington Post

The U.S. House on Thursday passed a spending bill that would block five laws affecting the District of Columbia, including the city’s new assisted-suicide law.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting representative in Congress, must now rely on the Senate to not take up and approve identical measures. If the Senate does not act, it would effectively stall for another year congressional efforts to rein in the District through spending-related measures.

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the District, said Congress by law has extensive power over the District but has allowed the city to assume more power over time.

“The District of Columbia has plenty of autonomy,” he said in a floor debate Wednesday. “When it comes to spending, that is the role of Congress given to us through the U.S. Constitution.”