Letter to the NYTimes Editor

August 17, 2009

 Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

 Dear Editor,

  I was saddened to read “False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Familiar Roots” in the Friday (August 14, 2009) edition of the Times.  Rather than examine the actual text of the bills, the Times simply editorialized against opponents of provisions within the health care proposals currently being considered.  The opening paragraph reads like something that might be uttered by Robert Gibbs during the daily press briefing in the West Wing. The job description of the White House Press Secretary and an independent newspaper are not one in the same, and by continuing to justify rather than report on this administration’s agenda the Times is failing it readership.

What the Times calls “rumors,” in fact, have some roots in a piece which the Times itself published.   That item, interestingly omitted from the article’s chronology of the rising “specter of government-sponsored, forced euthanasia,” was a 5,000-word feature piece published in the New York Times Magazine on July 19^th by Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, openly advocating the rationing of healthcare on the basis of QALYs, a measurement of one’s “quality-adjusted-life-year.”

As National Right to Life has noted in its analysis of the current proposal before the House, there is no protection to prevent Comparative Effectiveness Research from being used to discriminatorily deny healthcare based on age, present or predicted disability or expected length of life. To insist that this is a dangerous omission which could allow comparative effectiveness to be used to deny care to the most vulnerable patients is not fear-mongering, it is a realistic concern. Perhaps if the Times was not so ideologically invested in promoting this administration’s agenda they would be able to see that as well.

 Sincerely,

Derrick Jones
Communications Director
National Right to Life

Release: Idaho Bill Would Throw Patient’s Rights Out the Window

For immediate release:
Monday, March 23, 2009                                                              

IDAHO SENATE BILL 1114
THROWS PATIENT RIGHTS OUT THE WINDOW

 Idaho Senate Bill 1114, which has passed the Idaho state Senate, is currently awaiting hearing before the Idaho House Health and Welfare Committee. If passed, the bill would authorize health care providers to deny life-sustaining procedures, including food and fluids through feeding tubes or IV, against the will of patients and their family members.

The bill establishes a procedure by which healthcare providers can override patient and family decisions to choose lifesaving treatment and care, including patient’s wishes in their written advance directive. The bill’s dangerously vague language means that health care providers would be able to deny treatment to patients they think have a poor “quality of life,” as arbitrarily determined by a hospital ethics committee.                                                                                       

“In short, the bill dangerously overrides patient and family rights,” said Burke Balch J.D., Director of NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics.  “It takes choices away from the patient and family, instead placing life or death decisions in the hands of a hospital ethics committee or the health care provider acting even without an ethics committee. In effect, the passage of SB1114 would mean the deaths of those patients the health care providers deem unworthy to live.”

 Spokespersons, including independent experts, are available for interviews on this legislation. To arrange an interview, please contact the National Right to Life Committee Communications Department at 202-626-8825 or mediarelations@nrlc.org

 The National Right to Life Committee is the nation=s largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

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