Senator Arlen Specter has officially called for Senate hearings to scrutinize a guide for Veterans' end-of-life care. What? Another end-of-life controversy and you thought it was just about HR 3200, one of the House bills proposing health care reform. If you read the bill, you know it puts government in our faces about death and dying. Call them end of life bureaucrats, death squads or simply plug-pullers. It doesn't matter. Government wants us to start thinking about death options when they think we are going down hill, which apparently is age 65. I find this very amusing when we consider the Congressional pot is calling the citizen kettle black. 

So you're upset about it? Well of course. Everyone is, except that insulated Washington club of elected dictators. And you ain't seen nothin yet! Not until you've read Your Life, Your Choices, a 51 page document that should be entitled, Your Death, Your Choices. I became depressed just reading the table of contents. This has nothing to do with life. It is a manual about dying complete with "exercises," nifty little worksheets with check lists, and forms about everything the angel of death could muster up including organ donation and autopsy.

Who wrote this unbelievable contribution to the end of life for veterans? The author was a Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the Veteran Administration's National Center for Ethics in Health Care. The title alone makes me cringe. And this shouldn't surprise you — Pearlman, is an advocate for physician-assisted suicide and is known to support health-care rationing. Are you starting to connect the dots?

The veterans' manual talks about "Health Conditions & Treatments." Ah, a little hope you say? Not so fast. The "conditions" start with coma and dementia and progress to terminal illness. The "treatments" range from kidney dialysis to feeding tubes and breathing ventilators. One headline says, "Hope for Recovery" followed by "What are you feeling about hope?" The next sentence says, "Imagine that your are very sick and have been told that you will very likely die soon."  Well gosh! That's hopeful. Feeling depressed yet?

There is even an exercise on page 24 that can help veterans focus on what's important when they are dying. I like the last page 51 where Pearlman is thinking about change for the future. He writes, "Assisted suicide is currently illegal. However, even if it becomes legal, the person requesting would have to be of sound mind . . " So the poor veteran now at the end of the book, and possibly his rope, is left with a final thought. "Suicide."

In an August 19 opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Jim Towey, president of St. Vincent College and former director of the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives 2002-2006 said, "If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfortwith end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-carereform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs(VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasingthe slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quicklybecome a systematic denial of care."  Towey pointed out that after the Bush White House looked at the document, the VA quickly suspended its use. Obama is reversing that decision.

Okay Arlen Specter, as a member of the Veteran's Affairs Committee, you should do something about this, but are hearings really necessary? Can't the committee do something else and expedite the end of the use of this terrible document? Giving it to any veteran and especially someone who is ill or disabled, is nothing short of cruelty.

One more thing, Senator. Why don't you become part of the Seniors' Bill of Rights Movement?

Note: Please use this link to read the entire 51 page document, Your Life, Your Choices.