Health-care overhaul debate puts VA in the spotlight

It looks like some people would rather treat veterans so badly they will allow them to feel as if they are just not as capable as the rest of the people in this country making their own choices when it comes to the end of their lives. As I've posted here many times, we used our right with the VA and with a lawyer to make sure our own choices would be honored when we couldn't speak for ourselves. Too bad some think they can use veterans in a political game, but it's even worse when others just play along instead of finding out what the truth is. Veterans deserved a lot better out of all of us.

Health-care overhaul debate puts VA in the spotlight
While Republicans are calling a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health-planning booklet a "death book" that encourages veterans to kill themselves or forgo care, ethicists and legal and medical experts say it's a reasonable attempt to help veterans plan for the end of their lives.
By Chris Adams

McClatchy Newspapers

Republicans call VA's "Planning ... " a "death book."

WASHINGTON — While Republicans are calling a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health-planning booklet a "death book" that encourages veterans to kill themselves or forgo care, ethicists and legal and medical experts say it's a reasonable attempt to help veterans plan for the end of their lives.

Jim Towey, former director of President George W. Bush's White House office of faith-based initiatives, wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month that the VA's "Your Life, Your Choices" booklet encourages veterans to "hurry up and die." Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said the VA effort aimed at veterans was "encouraging them to commit suicide."

"There is nothing in this pamphlet or in any of the VA effort in this area that is aimed at asking that veterans be allowed to die to save money," said the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Caplan, one of the nation's leading bioethicists. "To say otherwise is just an exercise in ludicrous, inflammatory rhetoric."

VA chaplains said "Your Life" is helpful.
read more here
Health-care overhaul debate puts VA in the spotlight