End of Life Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, one of our society's greatest failures is our inability to equip and inform our families at the time of greatest stress and vulnerability: the end of life.

Even though Sarah Palin lied about ``death panels,'' I am proud to have been the foremost champion of protecting families and equipping them with the information they need to make those decisions before they are too late to inform those decisions and guarantee their wishes are respected and enforced.

No one wants to die in a hospital room but, sadly, too many people do so. Separated from their loved ones, too many are isolated from family and friends in those final hours. It doesn't have to be that way.

I fought for years to raise awareness to equip families to protect themselves and their loved ones, and to encourage doctors to have those often difficult conversations to do their part for those patients.

I led the battle for the Federal Government to put a value on those discussions. The Federal Government would spend tens of thousands of dollars for a 96-year-old woman with terminal cancer, but wouldn't pay $150 for her doctor to have the discussion with her and her family to understand her choices, how to manage it, and how to make sure her choices, whatever they were, were respected and enforced.

I led the battle for the Federal Government to put a value on that protection by adding end-of-life conversations to the list of services eligible for Medicare reimbursement. It took longer and was made more difficult by Sarah Palin's lies about death panels but, nonetheless, we won that fight.

Now doctors have the opportunity to invest their time and energy to have those often difficult discussions. This work ultimately had bipartisan, bicameral support. I enjoyed my partnership with the late Senator Johnny Isakson and with Senator Mark Warner.

We finally changed that policy for the Federal Government but, sadly, too few people today take advantage of it until it is too late and their loved ones face end of life at a hospital hooked up to some impersonal machine.

There are great resources and protections, but only if we help people understand how to take advantage of them. For example, advanced directives capture the wishes of the patient and have an enforceable document, or hospice care, which is not just for the final hours of life.

Hospice care often, today, is not just the final hours. It can be many days, even weeks. President Jimmy Carter is the best example of living with hospice, a higher quality of care. Actually, many people on hospice live longer and enjoy that higher quality of life with their families.

I am proud of our progress, but so much more needs to be done to protect our families when they are most vulnerable and in need.

One other item: We all need to do our part by filling out advanced directives and making our wishes known so people don't have to guess what our wishes are. It is the least we can do for our families and loved ones.

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