WSJ: VA pushes vets to consider death as an alternative to treatment

Wow:

Hot Air

This booklet has been in use since the Clinton administration. When the Bush administration finally reviewed “Your Life, Your Choices,” it suspended its use within the VA system. For some reason, the Obama administration and Shinseki have reinstated the booklet this year. The directive reinstituting the booklet was issued last month.

Perhaps some of the “death panels” rhetoric was overblown, but this is downright disgusting. The Bush administration was correct in suspending the use of these tactics to push vets into refusing treatment, and the government these men and women defended should be ashamed to have put that in their hands in the first place. If Obama wants to argue that he won’t bend the cost curve downward at the expense of treatment, maybe he should start by stopping that very policy at the VA — one of the existing “public plans” that need reform much more than the overall health-care system.