[alert] Please read from Sara: PCHETA may be moving in Senate - Need you to contact Senators

[alert] Please read from Sara: PCHETA may be moving in Senate - Need you to contact Senators

 

Subject: PCHETA may be moving in Senate - Need you to contact Senators

In the last week, 23 Senate Democrats have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors.

The bill is Palliative Care and Hospice Education Act (PCHETA) HR 1676/S693, 115th Congress.

The 115th Congress stays in power through January 2. There is a Senate floor period tomorrow.

As you may recall, the bill funds grants for educating doctors and nurses about palliative care and an option for promoting it with the general public.

Talking points I put together are attached.

Also there are 15 pro life Senators who co sponsored earlier. Their contact info is attached.

Opposing The Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act, H.R. 1676/S. 693 (2017-18) Talking Points Background: Palliative care includes hospice care with an earlier pathway for non-dying patients. The bill federally funds medical education and provides for “selling” palliative care to patients. 1. Hospice, an existing palliative care program, is plagued by fraud, poor quality care and wasted taxpayer money. Federal investigators found hospices enrolling patients who are not terminally ill without their knowledge or under false pretenses, providing poor quality care, and inappropriately billing Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars.1 The bill does not require patients to be notified when their care changes to hospice care. A federal grand jury issued a $60 million Medicare fraud indictment against Novus Health Services where patients were billed at the highest hospice rate and nurses administered controlled substances whether or not patients needed them, leading to patient deaths.2 Nearly half of hospices are unsure they could pass a government audit.3 Enrolling people who are classified as not terminal is the biggest concern. Id. In 2016, more than half of all Medicare hospice spending, $9.5 billion, was for patients who outlived their terminal prognosis. Id. 2. Palliative care is often a self-fulfilling pathway to death. Palliative care leading to the deaths of people who were not otherwise dying typically involves patients being casually assessed as terminal, placed in hospice, heavily sedated, and denied water so the diagnosis becomes self-fulfilling. These practices are so prevalent they were described by the Washington Post in a 2014 series,4 identified as a serious problem by Duke University professor Farr Curlin, M.D.in 2015,5 and identified as a patient safety problem by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2017.6 3. The bill moves the determination and control of medical ethics to federal bureaucrats without conscience protections. 4. The bill lacks definitions and criteria, leaving the qualifying phrase, “serious or lifethreatening illness,” to be defined after enactment by federal bureaucrats in consultation with palliative care organizations;7 most likely the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Care Medicine, and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, the legal successor of the Euthanasia Society of America,8 both recipients of Soros’ Open Society funds.9 5. The ban on using federal funds for assisted suicide, euthanasia and mercy killing relied on by the bill (Bill Section 6) has no mechanism for enforcement and is openly bypassed. For example, work to produce an article about how to hasten death through “voluntary” cessation of food and fluids, i.e. assist in suicides, was funded by a federal grant for another purpose.10 1 https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-02-16-00570.asp 2 https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/sixteen-individuals-charged-60-million-medicare-fraud-scheme 3 https://homehealthcarenews.com/2018/10/nearly-half-of-hospice-providers-uncertain-they-would-survive-an-audit/ 4 Peter Whoriskey, As More Hospices Enroll Patients Who Aren’t Dying, Questions about Lethal Doses Arise, Washington Post, August 21, 2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/08/21/as-more-hospicesenroll-patients-who-arent-dying-questions-about-lethal-doses-arise/ 5 Farr A. Curlin, M.D., Hospice and Palliative Medicine’s Attempt at an Art of Dying, chapter 4 in Dying in the TwentyFirst Century, edited by Lydia Dugdale, MD, MIT Press 2015 at pages 47-8. 6 https://psnet.ahrq.gov/webmm/case/425/Palliative-Care-Comfort-vs-Harm published November 2017. 7 Section 904(c)(3) to be created by the bill. 8 https://www.hospicepatients.org/euthanasia-soc-of-america-to-natl-hosp-and-palliative-care-org.pdf 9 https://capitalresearch.org/article/suicide_lobby/ ; http://aahpm.org/about/history ; https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/a_transforming.pdf 10 David A. Gruenewald, MD, Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking: A Practical Approach for Long-Term Care Facilities, Journal of Palliative Medicinehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28475406 2018 Sep;21(9):1214-1220.

Health Staff Emails for Prolife HR 1676 Sponsors