9/5/2014 – Encouraging End-of-Life Talks

There is reason to hope that a degree of sanity may be returning to the touchy issue of advance planning for medical care at the end of life. Just five years ago, Republican politicians, Sarah Palin prominent among them, were falsely charging that President Obama’s health care reforms would create “death panels” that could cut off care for the critically ill to save money on health care costs.

Since then, that claim has been thoroughly debunked and Republicans have moved on to other attacks on the reform law. Now, with little fanfare, some private and public insurers have begun paying doctors to have end-of-life discussions with their patients.

Read the full article at The New York Times.