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No Health Reform Plan Features Major Medicare Changes
Jerald Winakur, MD, a geriatrician, who also teaches at the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said none of the proposals are suggesting that "doctors substitute advance care planning for medical care."
"No one is proposing death panels or outside experts to decide who lives and dies. I would not be a part of such a system nor would any physician I know," he said.
But of the flip side, "any system that refuses to reward the work of healthcare professionals for doing advance care planning and conferencing with families during difficult times is pre-ordained to be cold and bureaucratic, sterile, and unempathetic," Winakur said. "It will subject our frail elderly and anyone who finds him or herself with an end-stage disease at the end of their lives to inappropriate, unnecessarily expensive, and possible futile care."
Janice Simmons is a senior editor and Washington, DC, correspondent for HealthLeaders Media Online. She can be reached at jsimmons@healthleadersmedia.com.
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John W (8/24/2009 at 4:49 PM)
CSPAN covered this meeting, and it was quite informative to watch, especially after all the town hall noise of the past few weeks. I found the panel on end-of-life care especially eye-opening, and some of the real-life stories riveting. Regarding Medicare sustainability, I have yet to see anybody -- political, academic, foundation etc. -- say much more than the obvious fact that the current course is impossible to sustain. Although Social Security reforms have not been enacted yet, there has been no shortage of concrete proposals. We don't have as much time to fix Medicare as we do with Social Security, so somebody needs to get some ideas on the table. What would a fiscally sustainable Medicare program look like?