Families Should Make Health Care Decisions

Back in July, I picked up the Sunday edition of a local newspaper, and read a guest column in the opinion section that kind of upset me, it was a piece that tried to justify the need for intervention in healthcare decisions so that families are moved toward "alleviating pain". His insinuation that Doctors and the Medical Industry was needed to be kept in check to defend patients as they faced end of life choices. I was moved to write back and share a bit of my experiences with the death of a close one. Turns out my reply was published in the following Sunday's paper, I never got a copy of the paper, but my letter was published online. I thought I'd share it here as well;

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Families Should Make Health Care Decisions

In response to Ira Byock’s July 22 column “New law advances rational health care, not rationing”:Families Should Make Health Care Decisions

Perhaps I am missing his point, but I felt a sense of dudgeon at his insinuation that our health care system does nothing put perpetuate the misery of being elderly and sick by choosing quantity over quality. The system is not, and should never be, what makes the decisions; the care is not what makes it easier to say goodbye to a loved one.

His most accurate statement was that disease knows no politics, and the hand that feeds the payroll of a health care facility deserves no spot at the table when a family is making these tough decisions.

When my mother passed away last year, it was in the wake of several difficult discussions about quality of life. Many factors and considerations weigh on your soul when determining what is best for a loved one. She was sick, she was not going to get better, and I’m proud to say that my family had the maturity to know when the time for fighting was passed, and the time for saying our goodbyes began.

The question I charge to proponents of creating a committee, medical or not, to assess these decisions: Considering some families need to fight to the end, and some families need to know a loved one leaves us peacefully, but what kind of a system even attempts to shift that power to a third party, away from the family?

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If you do not know about the IPAB, I strongly suggest you start learning about it, in about 3 years it will be an issue that will be brought up in discussions frequently.