Preparing Americans for Death Lets Hospices Neglect End of Life reports that ‘[m]ore than four in 10 Americans now meet their end in hospice care, drawn by its promise of palliation and pain alleviation instead of extreme measures in their waning days. Medicare’s hospice rolls doubled to 1.1 million patients from 2000 to 2009, the last year of available data.” This has led to questionable business practices and poor patient care in some cases. “New federal hospice investigations rose 50 percent between 2008 and 2010, according to Gerald Roy, deputy inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare spending.”
High quality end-of-life care is crucial to combatting the campaign for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia progress.
Teresa Collett
Teresa Stanton Collett is a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches bioethics, property law, and constitutional law. A nationally prominent speaker and scholar, she is active in attempts to rebuild the Culture of Life and protect the institutions of marriage and family. She often represents groups of state legislators, the Catholic Medical Association, and the Christian Medical and Dental Association in appellate case related to medical-legal matters. She represented the governors of Minnesota and North Dakota before the U.S. Supreme Court as amici curiae regarding the effectiveness of those states’ parental involvement laws. She has served as special attorney general for Oklahoma and Kansas related to legislation designed to protect the well-being of minors and unborn children. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and has testified before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittees on the Constitution, as well as numerous legislative committees in the states.
