Trying to provide dignity for the dying

To the editor:

In Charles Krauthammer's Sunday column, "End-of-life counseling a state-sponsored nudge toward death," he seems to be trying to point out a nefarious motive behind section 1233 of H.R. 3200. He is wrong. Allow me to relate two personal experiences to help enlighten him.

The first took place many years ago when I was a paramedic. We responded to a 911 call for a near-drowning. The victim was 92-year-old man who had been a World War I flying ace. A genuine war hero. He was swimming in his pool when he suffered a massive heart attack. He nearly drowned because of it. As you can imagine, his chances for survival were slim.

That is what I was thinking as I stuffed a tube down his throat into his lungs and started breathing for him. My partner started an IV and pumped caustic, though sometimes life-saving drugs, into him. To our surprise we got a pulse. We rushed him to the ER where similar caustic drugs were dripped into him to keep him "alive."

You might think I was proud of this, but you would be incorrect. You see, anyone with even the slightest knowledge of biology knows, far too many of his brain cells had died long before we started to "save" him. We revived a brain dead man who had, by all accounts, lived an illustrious and honorable life, only to be kept "technically" alive by means that, in this case anyway, I felt ashamed to be part of.

The second incident hit closer to home. I lost a loved one suddenly to a cerebral hemorrhage near the basal ganglia, choking off the part of the brain that controls breathing and heartbeat. I stayed with him all night, knowing in my heart that he could not survive and the only thing keeping him alive were machines and IV drips. During one of the ICU nurse's visits I hopefully observed that he was producing urine, an indication of good kidney function. I was, of course, grasping at straws. The nurse quickly brought me back down to earth as she pointed to her head and indelicately asked, "What about this?" She meant his brain, which stopped functioning hours earlier. The next day I held him tightly as he was removed from life support, his beautiful heart slowing to a standstill.

Mr. Krauthammer would have us believe that helping people decide how they want to live -- and die -- is really a plot by the government to rid us of the surplus population. That providing this information will allow greedy kin to pull the plug sooner than they otherwise would. This may indeed be the case, sometimes -- though rarely I would think. But most of the time this is a heart-wrenching decision that should be considered long before it occurs, by all concerned, so that a horrible moment in life can somehow be given at least a patina of dignity and without the unnecessary guilt that political theorists would have us suffer so their miniscule point can be made.

William Hawkrigg

HENDERSON

Evil insurance companies

To the editor:

In your Saturday editorial, "Health insurance 'reform,' " you attack much-needed health care reform with biased opinion and tired lies. In fact, according to a SurveyUSA poll of Aug. 20, fully 76 percent of Americans favor a choice between private medical insurance and a government run option, and rightly so. These Americans realize that those who can afford medical insurance at all are paying exorbitant premiums for questionable coverage, while the company CEOs are pocketing, on average, more than $10 million yearly.

You posted a couple of quotes from Michael Cannon, wherein he prognosticates the number of currently insured people who might leave their employer-based insurance in favor of a public plan. These numbers vary widely depending the source, but the crux of his "anti" argument is that people won't be paying the private insurers anymore, which is bad for profits. The Cato Institute, for whom he writes, is a pro-business, anti-tax think tank.

The Lewin Group is also quoted in your piece as stating 'millions would be involuntarily ousted from their current health plans." It has been stated repeatedly that if people like their current health plans, they could keep them. Also, let's note that the Lewin Group is a subsidiary of UnitedHealthGroup, one of the largest health insurers in the country.

All the solutions put forth by Mr. Cannon end up putting more money into these insurance companies, so their bean counters can do what they do now: raise premiums and cancel policies of the sick.

It is easy for Americans to discover who is behind these lies surrounding health care reform. Just look for who has the most money to lose. The current players in the market, the health insurance companies, are spending millions to stop any change, because they are getting rich off the current system. The only change they will tolerate is that which enhances their monopoly.

The only guarantee Americans have to lower health costs is choice. And when the government offers that choice, it will bring costs down for everyone. We will no longer be fleeced by these insurance companies.

Dan Wesley

LAKE HAVASU CITY, ARIZ.