• Health care urban legends
• Boycott ‘A Perfect Getaway’
• Let’s talk nuclear
• Moderate adjectives
• Alien hoax
Health care urban legends
In regard to the Sunday letter from Mr. Georgi that describes section 1233 of the proposed health care bill as a section which “mandates repeated attempts … to convince senior citizens to die, by telling them how to end their lives sooner…”
The actual health care bill is available at energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.pdf. Input page 425 at the top of the page next to the blue arrow and hit enter. It will take you to the referenced pages. Read it and decide for yourself what it says. I may have missed something.
My conclusion from reading that section is that it adds a new benefit to Medicare to pay a doctor or nurse practitioner a fee if they explain applicable state law on living wills, medical powers of attorney, etc. to a patient once every five years and more often if they get sick. It is entirely voluntary like most Medicare services.
When my dad was terminally ill he had counseling of this sort and my brother had the power of attorney as part of his living will in case someone had to “pull the plug.”
This type of counseling has been going on for years. There is nothing insidious about this section of the health bill. It does not tell senior citizens how to end their lives sooner, nor does it say medical care will be withheld from seniors depending how long they have to live.
The bottom line is that it describes a process so that the patient may make or his proxy may make an informed decision about how they might want or not want to continue to live. It gives a person an informed choice. My mother had terminal inoperable cancer and lived for six months in great pain. No medication or operation could help with the exception of morphine to help control the intense pain she suffered. She was advised of her situation by a similar method as described above.
Further rumors about the health plan involve assisted suicide. Remember, euthanasia is illegal. A couple of doctors went to jail for doing that.
Nowhere does it say that Medicare will be withheld from senior citizens depending on how many years they have left to live. This is not true in England as stated in the letter. Please see this Snopes.com discussion of this topic at www.snopes.com/politics/medical/seniordeath.asp. For those who are not familiar with Snopes, it is an independent clearing house for finding the facts about rumors, etc.
While I do not support the administration’s proposed health plan in many areas, I do not believe it is fair to pass on these e-mail urban legends as truth. I have seen many others and it would behoove one to check things out before passing judgment.
Tommy Thompson, Princeville
Boycott ‘A Perfect Getaway’
Please join me and many of my friends in boycotting “A Perfect Getaway,” the trashy horror thriller movie set in Kalalau but filmed mainly in Puerto Rico.
Kalalau is a sacred place to many. The disrespect shown by the producers of “A Perfect Getaway” to the people of Kaua‘i should not be ignored.
I’d also like to thank Michael Levine and all others involved in reporting on this story in the pages of The Garden Island. We are lucky to have such a forum for public discussion on Kaua‘i.
Taylor Finley, Hanapepe
Let’s talk nuclear
What is green, load bearing, doesn’t block up wild rivers, has no sight line problems, is quiet, does not kill the birds, and costs $250 per house per year?
Right — nuclear energy!
It is time KIUC, HECO and the state legislators start a conversation on the cost/benefits or nuclear energy. With the world’s major oil fields in decline, the time to make tough decisions is now.
JoAnne Georgi, ‘Ele‘ele
Moderate adjectives
In the Letters on Saturday, Ada Koene was correct in taking Dennis Chaquette to task for his letter of bias on July 22. However, in the process, she offers up equally biased and ridiculous opinions.
It is at best disingenuous to suggest that conservatives make more tax free charitable donations because they are better people and ignore the conservative demographic of wealth and property.
The poorly thought out remarks of your friends and neighbors do not reflect the overall philosophies of those who oppose you politically. These are “straw man” arguments.
The word “liberal” does not describe an extreme position any more than the word “conservative” does; except in propaganda. If you describe communists or the extreme left wing as liberal, then the word conservative would have to include fascists and the extreme right wing.
Therefore, Stalin and Mao are “liberals” and “conservatives” get to own Hitler and Mussilini. Of course, both assignments are inaccurate since liberal and conservative are moderate rather than extreme adjectives.
This letter takes neither a liberal or conservative position. However, in order to more easily dismiss it, one of those labels will be applied.
Peter Antonson, Kalaheo
Alien hoax
On Friday, a letter was published claiming that the Senate passed a bill granting Social Security benefits to illegal aliens.
This is not true! It is an Internet hoax, being spread by right-wing, anti-immigrant groups.
You can read the details of this hoax at www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp. People need to be careful about falling for these Internet scams and hoaxes. They are easily checked out at the Snopes Web site, which keeps track of them.
A little common sense and some healthy skepticism are useful when these so-called Internet petitions start flooding people’s e-mail. They are almost always hoaxes.
Richard Laue, Koloa
