December 28, 2010
Making Choices for End-of-Life Care
To the Editor:
Re “Obama Institutes End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir” (front page, Dec. 26):
The new Medicare regulation covering physicians’ discussions with their patients about end-of-life issues is once again under attack by right-wing ideologues. The new rule is specifically designed to give patients the opportunity to explain their wishes about end-of-life care to their personal physicians. It represents a thoughtful and valuable step toward allowing patients to control decisions about their own health care.
Yet Elizabeth D. Wickham of LifeTree obstinately and perversely insists, “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”
This is an astonishing distortion, comparable to the canard last year that the Obama administration was planning “death panels” to decide who was worthy to receive health care.
Peter Rogatz
Port Washington, N.Y., Dec. 26, 2010
