Last Night My Father Asked Me To Kill Him

If this story of Keith Olbermann and his personal experience with health care in America doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you are a heartless bastard.


Unforunately, I would guess that this same story is happening every day in every hospital across America.


Families are being torn because the people in power - the people WE elected - play their little political games while those we love die - or want to die.


This should NOT be an issue in America today Yet we constantly make the same mistakes of electing politicians that continue to lay in bed with, in this case, insurance company lobbyists.


Its time to WAKE THE FUCK UP America.


A medical decision should be a decision made between the patient, the patients family AND A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL - NOT A FACELESS INSURANCE COMPANY!



What I had done, conferring with the resident in ICU, the conversation about my father's panicky, not-in-complete-control-of-his-faculties demand that all treatment stop, about the options and the consequences and the compromise - the sedation -- the help for a brave man who just needed a break... that conversation, that one -- was what these ghouls who are walking into Blair House tomorrow morning decided to call "Death Panels."

Your right to have that conversation with a doctor -- not the government, but a doctor -- and your right to have insurance pay for his expertise on what your options are when Dad says "kill me" or what your options are when Dad is in a coma and can't tell you a damn thing, or what your options are when everybody is healthy and happy and coherent and you're just planning ahead -- your right to have the guidance and the reassurance of a professional who can lay that out for you... that's a quote "death panel."






It's a life panel.

A life panel -- it can save the pain of the patient and the family -- it is the difference between you guessing what happens next, and you being informed about what probably will, and that's the difference between you sleeping at night or second-guessing and third-guessing and thirtieth-guessing.

And it can also be the place where the family says 'we want you to keep him alive no matter what, we believe in miracles' and the doctor saying yes. Nobody gets to say no except the patient and the family.

It's a life panel. And damn those who call it otherwise to hell.


 I wish Keith and his father well.