The three laws —that is (l)  The Age Discriminatin Statute,  (2)  the Hospice and Pallliative Care Statute,  and (3) The Patient Self Determination Act of 1991 hav e resulted in patients being hung out on a limb where they can be both OVERTREATED for profit and UNDERTREATED for profit withing their INFORMED  CONSENT.  

Why has there been no Federal Mandate for physicians to seek informed consent for either curative care or palliative care from their elderly and very sick patients?    Why weren’t the physicians put under the mandate of the 1991 PSDA to begin with?  

It’s always about money~~~~~~!!!!!

The problem of OVERTREATMENT of the ELDERLY and very ill is driven by the profit motive.   Because physicians lobbied NOT to be placed under the provisions of the PSDA in 1991,  and,  of course,,  they WERE NOT!,  Physicians do NOT have to SEEK INFORMED CONSENT for one of two legal standards of care reimbursed by Medicare,    i.e.,  either curative or palliative,  from their elderly and very sick patients.   Physicians  don’t have to tell elderly patients that  there is the OPTION of doing nothing and then transitioning to palliative care and Hospice .except in those States,  like NY,  where they have passed new laws that force physicians to inform patients about Hospice and Palliatie Care. 

Physicians (because of the inadequate PSDA)  apparently don’t have to seek consent for one of the two legal standards of care,  except in NY and a few other states,  and therefore are free to overtreat the elderly patients when they KNOW or there is a good possibility  that CMS and the private insurers will reimburse them for the treatment (as required by law).  

Because the physicians wouldn’t cooperate and seek informed consent for the standard of care that both the physician and the patient agree is  the most beneficial in the long run,  many elderly patients are cruelly overtreated and exploited at the end of their lives for profits.   .  

We now have to have  IPAB to dev elop an End-Of-Life Standard of Care that provides beneficial treatment to the elderly whose great age is a co-morbidity factor in many cases and who do have the right to shorten their lives and, thus, their suffering by refusing life-safing and life-extending treatment as permitted under the 1991 PSDA    The very ill elderly are given this right in the 1991 PSDA even when the refused life-extending or life-saving treatment has NOT been deemed to be medically futile by the physician and the hospitasl.     .           

As for lawyers I was actually interested in becoming one, but the lawyers and professors who spoke at or taught the classes I attended, in a conservative university no less, basically said you “have” to advocate for things you don’t believe in, because for example your clients are often guilty of the crimes but you still defend them.

What’s worse is hearing them defend frivolous lawsuits (which is destroying thousands of small businesses every year) but you have to understand to them, destroying the wealth of an innocent businessman seems pretty weak stuff compared to defending murderers and rapists.

Lawyers should be BANNED from politics because they shouldn’t be able to write the laws that they then earn money from arguing in court. It’s a conflict of interest because then the laws are written in ways that benefit those who use lawyers.