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Compliance
with Advance Directives: Wrongful Living and Tort Law Incentives
(SSRN)
Modern ethical and legal norms generally require that deference
be accorded to patients' decisions regarding treatment, including
decisions to refuse life-sustaining care, even when patients
no longer have the capacity to communicate those decisions
to their physicians.
Confronting
Questions of Life and Death (Freep.com - 9/7/09)
Prior planning can ease tough family decisions.
Patti's Comment: Have you discussed your preferences with
your loved ones?
Death
in the Family (New York Times - 12/2/07)
Efforts by ex-governor Booth Gardner (now suffering from Parkinson's)
to bring physician-assisted suicide to the State of Washington.
Includes argument that physician-assisted suicide is a threat
to women.
Dying
with Dignity (Stock Market Help)
As modern, optimistic, technology-loving, forward-looking
Americans, we not only hate to talk about death; we love to
spend our time and money as though we will live forever. As
a result, we tend to handle the end of life pretty terribly—financially
as well as physically and emotionally.
End
of Life Choices: A View From the Front Line (New York
Times - 11/11/08)
Compassion & Choices is a non-profit organization best
known for its efforts to legalize physician assistance for
the dying.
Findings
Support Value of Advance Directives... (Kaiser Health
News - 4/1/10)
One in four elderly Americans require someone else to make
decisions about their medical care at the end of their lives,
according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
How
to Choose Hospice Care (Go-Go Mum - 9/09)
Determining the appropriate hospice care you or a loved one
requires at the end-of-life may seem like a daunting task
to take on during an already difficult time.
Letting
Go - What Should Medicine Do When it Can't Save Your Life?
(New Yorker - 8/2/10)
Modern medicine is good at staving off death with aggressive
interventions—and bad at knowing when to focus, instead,
on improving the days that terminal patients have left.
Making
a Plan to Ease Grief
Patients who have no plans could end up with a court-appointed
guardian. To get a copy of a living will from the Visiting
Nurse Association of SE Michigan, see "Five
Wishes."
Patti's Comment: Nice info on leaving guidelines with loved
ones from the firm to which I am Of Counsel.
Medical
Treatment of Dementia Patients at the End of Life: Can the
Law Accommodate the Personal Identity and Welfare Problems?
Legal approaches to decision-making in the area of the medical
care of incompetent persons are generally based on respect
for the patient’s autonomy, or protection of her welfare,
or some combination of the two. Advance decision-making and
the substituted judgment test are the two examples of autonomy-based
legal approaches to incompetent individuals. If the incompetent
individual was previously competent, her earlier autonomous
decisions regarding medical treatment can be projected into
the future once she becomes incompetent.
Medicare
Hospice Benefits (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services)
Official government booklet for Medicare hospice benefits.
Medicare
Hospice Benefits (The Federal Medicare Agency) (large
print edition)
A booklet that explains the hospice program, who is eligible,
how to find a hospice program and where to get more help.
Physician-Assisted
Death - From Oregon to Washington State (New England
Journal of Medicine - 12/11/08)
Residents of the state of Washington voted 58% to 42% to allow
physician-assisted suicide.
Save
Money on a Funeral (The Consumerist - 3/6/09)
Someone wrote to us this week that a person in his family
is terminally ill, and that he was told "that the cost
of the casket, funeral, viewing, and burial would possibly
exceed 12,000 dollars." He thinks that's an "exorbitant
amount of money," and so do we.
Schiavo
Case Brings Light to Living Wills (Click on Detroit
- 3/21/05)
Terri Schiavo didn't have a living will. But because of her,
thousands of other Americans won't make that same mistake.
Attorneys and organizations that promote the importance of
living wills and advance directives say the bitter legal battle
over the severely brain damaged woman has led many people
to put their end-of-life wishes in writing.
What
Do We Advise Our Clients? (Margaret Dore - King County
Bar Assn.)
A client wants to know about the new Death with Dignity Act,
which legalizes physician-assisted suicide in Washington.
Do you take the politically correct path and agree that it’s
the best thing since sliced bread? Or do you do your job as
a lawyer and tell him that the Act has problems and that he
may want to take steps to protect himself?
The
Green Hereafter (Slate - 2/17/09)
How to leave an environmentally friendly corpse.
The
New Alone (WashingtonPost.com - Jan. 27, 2008)
Because of profound changes in how Americans organize and
sustain -- and often break up -- our families, our nation
will soon confront a never-before-seen shift in how we die
and whom we'll have around us when we do. And the likelihood
is that on every level, we will be dying much more alone.
What
an End-of-Life Advisor Could Have Told Me (New York Times
- 11/15/08)
A first-person account of this reporter's mother's end-of-life
choices. |
