Selected excerpts, along with bracketed comments by Donald W.
Miller, Jr., M.D.
(The bold, italic, and red font text that the author uses
in Stealth Euthanasia are copied as is here.)
When the federal government becomes the big HMO itself, test and
treatment denials will be the
equivalent of death sentences for some, even many. The new health care reform
law creates several methods that are likely to result in rationed care under
the guise of “limiting expenditures,” or “keeping costs down.” [The power elite’s 2010 “Affordable Care Act” is a giant step
towards their goal of installing a government-controlled and run, centralized,
single-payer health care system — “the big HMO itself.”]
About 40% of all American
deaths now occurring in hospice. [The new politically correct American
way to die.]
This book provides a rare glimpse of the realities of health
care in America that you will find nowhere else [This is not true. See my 2015Journal
of American Physicians and Surgeons article “Modern Medicine
at the Crossroads,” also on LRC, and other articles and books on these
realities by other investigators.]
Because of the HIPAA privacy
regulations, nobody interested in researching what is actually going on in
hospice can get access to the data, so hospices that have an agenda can act
without any outside interference or supervision. [This is a key point in the book and an important insight by the
author.]
Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, who our President appointed Health Advisor,
promotes the “Complete Lives System” that is being implemented to ration care.
Donald Berwick, who our President appointed administrator of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, is a strong proponent of Comparative
Effectiveness Research which will also be used to ration care. Under the new
law, “Accountable Care Organizations” [ACOs] are set up
which will force very aggressive rationing practices by medical groups. [Despite substantial effort the “Complete Lives System” could not be incorporated in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Furthermore,ACOs are fast going bankrupt.]
Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) and the
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research institute (PCORI), whose main activities
will result in rationed care. [After considerable opposition
the IPAB was also removed from the ACA.]
Palliative care (symptom
management).
There is one practice that is
sweeping through hospices and being very widely used: terminal or palliative
sedation. This involves permanently sedating the patient, allowing the patient
to dehydrate and die. It looks outwardly peaceful as the patient is made to
sleep in a medically-induced coma, but the patient’s death is the result. [Sad. But true.]
The top level policymakers have decided that people will die in
hospice or palliative care units and that they will be pushed into hospice
through a wide variety of means. $3.6 billion saved in one year.
Think that motivates the government? That’s nothing compared to the savings
when the people placed into hospice doubles in the years to come. That’s the
plan. If patients are hurried along toward death, the savings skyrocket! [To make matter even worse, it will not make much difference in ever-rising medical care costs.]
The “culture of death” that
promotes imposing death through euthanasia, assisted-suicide or the Third Way
in hospice (terminal sedation) views the pro-life movement as “the enemy.” In
fact, they view traditional American society as “the enemy,” something to be
manipulated and defeated so that their goals can be achieved. It is clear that
traditional American values are pro-life. The Declaration of Independence
mentions specifically the right to life!
Its 1994 Charter for Health Care Workers specifically warns
against depriving the dying of the “possibility of living his own life, by
reducing him to a state of unconsciousness not worthy of a human being. This is
why the administration of narcotics for the sole purpose of depriving
the dying person of a conscious end is a truly deplorable practice.”
[This brings to mind the spirited 2006 movie Two
Weeks with Sally Fields, which my wife and I saw recently, from
Netflix, which I highly recommend.]
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider
and 96% of its services for pregnant women are abortions.” [The author describes how a fetus, viewed on ultrasound, even in
its first three months of life reacts and fights to keep from being aborted by
an abortionist.]
But withholding the patient’s
regular medications, way before the patient reaches the end, active phase of
dying, pushes the patient into a crisis. The patient then appears to
be “actively dying” and is then either sedated, given morphine and
other opioids, or both, and that un-needed cocktail of medications completely
destabilizes the patient, who then dies. The trusting family doesn’t
know what happened. Sometimes unneeded laxatives are given to promote
uncontrolled diarrhea and contribute to life-threatening dehydration. [Pretty sickening.]
Patient “autonomy.” “Patient Self-Determination.” Haven’t we
heard that before? We have. Again, this is the language being used today to
justify the legalization of assisted-suicide, the “right to die,” and has been
one of the three principles of the federal ethics set forth by the
Congressionally-created Belmont Commission in 1978. [Elites
are putting the leading component of medical ethics, patient autonomy, to ill
effect.].
A denial of nutrition, may, in the long run, become the only
effective way to make certain that a large number of biologically tenacious
patients actually die.” “Given the increasingly large
pool of superannuated, chronically ill, physically marginal elderly, it could
well become the nontreatment of choice.” And it now is the
“nontreatment of choice,” implemented in many hospices, hospitals, and nursing
homes around the country making “sure” patients who just won’t die “soon enough” actually die. To make it
seem more humane, sedation is added. [Said again, this way.]
There is a reason the major
media refuses to publish the truth about hospice, palliative care, health care
reform and stealth euthanasia. Most of the major media outlets like the
Washington Post, ABC News, CNN and others have direct connections to those who
support the culture of death approach: George Soros and others. Soros has poured millions into the major media and
active journalists are on the boards of directors of Soros-funded
organizations. In addition, many journalists support the Third Way stealth
euthanasia practiced in many hospice and palliative care units (just “let him
go”) and the legalization of euthanasia and assisted-suicide. [The picture of Soros’ face keeps popping up
everywhere.]
HIPAA was “sold” to the public with the
idea it would protect patient’s private personal information. HIPAA forms a
complete wall of silence about what goes on behind closed curtains in doctor’s
offices, hospitals, in hospice agencies, nursing homes, assisted living and any
clinic of any sort. In 2009, the “HITECH” Act modified the HIPAA Privacy Rule
to give it dramatically increased penalties: It’s about the
silencing staff that sees what goes on. Employees. Health care workers
are not going to talk about problems in health care
with the public (say through a news story) unless they wish to risk everything
on a casual comment. [I also discuss HIPAA and HITECH
in my “Modern Medicine at the Crossroads” article.]
The Washington State “Death With Dignity Act” allows physicians
to write prescriptions for a lethal drug and orders the medical examiners to falsely list the cause of
death as the illness the patient was suffering from, rather
than the lethal drug they took to kill themselves. Falsification of death
certificates is nothing new, but openly ordering the medical examiners to lie
is new. We hear about falsification of death certificates often from families
who report their loved one was killed in a hospice or palliative care setting
and then the cause of death is listed as cancer, Alzheimers or some other
illness. Just as in the case of falsification of medical charts: whatever is officially listed (as the cause of death) is the
truth, because it says so. It doesn’t matter that it’s
all a complete lie. If everyone in government simply accepts what the record
says, that is what the “official” truth is. Something that could have come
right out of the Soviet Union’s propaganda machine. [As a
physician/surgeon who practiced medicine in Washington State for 40 years, I am
so glad now to be retired.]
[Especially having just turned age 76, talk
about a scary graph!]
Not providing services to those the elite decide are not worthy of
care is rationing. [Except, of course, the power
elites themselves will have their own category of health care, where nothing
will be rationed.]
Those who are pushing reform forward believe strongly in the
need for entitlement reform. They will ration health care through the “Complete
Lives System,” “Cost Efficiency Research”, and by encouraging physicians with
financial incentives to get elders into hospice and palliative care sooner than
they have been doing. [There is a lot of repetition in this
186,000-word book.]
The President appointed Donald Berwick, the director of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”). Berwick has a long history of
supporting health care reform including the rationing of care. In 1994, he
wrote “Eleven Worthy Aims for Clinical Leadership of Health System Reform” and
suggested that:
“Most metropolitan areas in the United States should reduce the
number of centers engaging in cardiac surgery, high-risk obstetrics, neonatal
intensive care, organ transplantation, tertiary cancer care, high-level trauma
care, and high-technology imaging.” [JAMA. 1994;272(10):797-802.]
Berwick stated very plainly in a 2009 interview, “Rethinking
Comparative Effectiveness Research” that he supports its use to ration care and
bring costs down: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration
care–the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”[The author accurately describes Dr. Berwick; and although he does
not dwell on it, comparative effectiveness research is subject to bias and
manipulation.]
The real question is whether decisions made by Big Government
about the availability of the care you need will be in your interests or the
interests of an impersonal government evaluation of what “people of your age”
should have access to. Remember, “Comparative Effectiveness Research” may sound
reasonable at some point, but when coupled with Ezekiel Emanuel, MD’s “Complete
Lives System,” it’s a recipe for disaster. And these types of ways of thinking,
so shocking to ordinary citizens, have been promoted for many years. They will
be pushed forward by many of the elite whether or not the health care reform
law is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. [Repeated. Since declared constitutional, the ACA remains a recipe
for disaster and currently is in the process of steadily self-destructing.]
The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), (also mentioned
in the health care reform law as the “Independent Medicare Advisory Board”)
with its Presidentially-appointed 15 members, can amass unimaginable power to
limit care provided to Medicare recipients. Mark Hemingway has written an April
14, 2011, article, “Obama’s Medicare Plan: Rationing by Bureaucrats — The
president’s big plan for Medicare involves unelected bureaucrats making life or
death decisions.” Hemingway states that “any recommendations IPAB makes about Medicare spending automatically
become law,” and that “IPAB is more and more likely to
be a Trojan Horse for the serious command-and-control rationing.
[After the extensive dispute, the IPAB is no longer a part of the
ACA, i.e., “Obamacare.” The Complete Lives System also has not yet been
implemented—see my 2015 article “Modern Medicine at the Crossroads” for more on
this.]
An Amazon reviewer of the book writes, “Euthanasia in hospice is
horrifyingly real.”
The author addresses subject of stealth euthanasia head-on. But
parts of it, as noted, are already outdated. While repetitious, the book is
well written, with chilling effect. But this 286-page, 186,000-word manuscript
is overly long and could profit from being updated and shortened.
Nevertheless, Stealth Euthanasia unflinchingly addresses a very important subject, and in its free
online format, the author provides many important links.