All Members Please Read.

[carlie]

All members,

Please remember to keep politics and religion off the board.

Posts that deal with these issues will be closed and deleted.

This is not up for debate.

We can use PM's and emails for politics and religion.

We have quite a few new members and would like to give them all

some help and encouragement.

If there are not solid links for issues that can cause VA claimant's some fear,

please don't post information that is originated for scare tactics.

Remember, many VA claimant's are fragile from fighting this system.

If a moderator makes a request in a topic or thread, please follow the requests.

Hadit's board has grown to the point there is no time for bickering back and forth.

Anyone that has forgotten Hadit's rules and mission - please review the homepage.

Thanks,

Hadit's Administration and Moderator's.

[MikeR]

Carlie,

I can do that. I also realize I have no freedom of speech here. I asked for the thing to be debunked, but instead I got vitriolic outbursts and pious indignation.

All I want to know is if the VA is giving out these pamphlets? A simple yes or no, or we don't know would have been better. I only asked to be corrected, not stoned and villified. I am not here to match wits with anyone. I just want an answer.

Sincerely

Mike

[Pete53]

No one knows the answer to that question Mike. I am sure that you can send an IRIS inquiry if it is bothering you. You may be missing the bigger point that free speech is not the issue. Obeying the rules and respecting each other is.

When you become a Member you agree to follow the rules as does evryone who Posts.

Please let this go.

The Moderators and TBird invest a lot of time trying to make things work here so that Members and visitors can get help in dealing with the VA. Its actually a very large Board and a Post like this 8 or 10 years ago would have led to a flame war people leaving and the Board being shut down while folks cooled off.

If anyone can show a pdf or link to a VA Pamphlet that advocates suicide please feel free to start another link

Until than put a lid on it.

[MikeR]

No one knows the answer to that question Mike. I am sure that you can send an IRIS inquiry if it is bothering you. You may be missing the bigger point that free speech is not the issue. Obeying the rules and respecting each other is.

When you become a Member you agree to follow the rules as does evryone who Posts.

Please let this go.

The Moderators and TBird invest a lot of time trying to make things work here so that Members and visitors can get help in dealing with the VA. Its actually a very large Board and a Post like this 8 or 10 years ago would have led to a flame war people leaving and the Board being shut down while folks cooled off.

If anyone can show a pdf or link to a VA Pamphlet that advocates suicide please feel free to start another link

Until than put a lid on it.

Thank you, that is all that I wanted.

Mike

[rentalguy1]

This is not a political post. I am merely giving a repost of the crux of this matter.

Wall Street Journal:

By JIM TOWEY

If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran’s health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update “Your Life, Your Choices” between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices”).

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.

Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called “Five Wishes” that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA’s document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.

After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.

If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on “Your Life, Your Choices.” He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.

Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.

[rentalguy1]

Here is a link to the actual VA pamphlet entitled "Your life, your choices."

http://www1.va.gov/pugetsound/docs/ylyc.pdf

The VA is attempting to trick vets into making decisions that could be used against them when the time for end of life care comes. While assisted suicide is illegal in 49 of 50 states (someone please correct me if another state besides Oregon allows it), a veteran coecered into signing a "living will" can equate to the same thing.

Again, this is not politics. I could care less either way. I am just providing the requested information.

[RetiredVet]

Here is a link to the actual VA pamphlet entitled "Your life, your choices."

http://www1.va.gov/pugetsound/docs/ylyc.pdf

The VA is attempting to trick vets into making decisions that could be used against them when the time for end of life care comes. While assisted suicide is illegal in 49 of 50 states (someone please correct me if another state besides Oregon allows it), a veteran coecered into signing a "living will" can equate to the same thing.

Again, this is not politics. I could care less either way. I am just providing the requested information.

they should pul the plug on most va empoyess. it shoudl eb easier to fire federal employess. no doubt thousands of va employeees have had millions of complaints against them and still work for the government. none of the vet orgs help to push to get fedearal employess fired even at the VA. they orgs are a waste fo money. you cannot solve the continued porblems with statements and complaints which all those va orgs do. these orgs know who the problem people at the va are. they deal with those same people year after year trying to help evts get what they deserve. but they never push to get them fired for not doing their job and for not following the laws.

if the orgs were doign their job we woudl nto have anythign liek this happeneing. but they kiss butt at the va. they use quaota systems liek the government uses. vets have becoem a quota to them.

time somone staretd a vet org that went after va employess that contiunuesously make errors or do nto follw the law.

i had a guy at the va send me e-mails with incomplete sentences and words spelled wrong. he has a masters degree, never bene in service and not disabled. this si what we deal with now. just an educated idiot.

if he is on as many meds as i am then he shoudl nto being doing what he does. i have problems typoing wiht loss of most of my rigth hand and side effects of meds etc. if he is liek em he shoudl be looking for another job.

we need va orgs to demand legislation so these peopel are drug tested randomly. everyone decidng on a vets fate and making decisions on a vet should be drug tested. the va does nto want it because they would have to fire 50 % or more of their workers. the orgs won't do it becsue they really do nto care. sma eiwht every agency of the federal government. they woudl lose 50% of more of theri employess.

i have aksed several groups to do this. to campaign for drug testing but they never do it.

our life our choisces. if we do nto choose to demand our orgs to demand drug testing and easier ways to fire va employyees then we deserve this kidn of treatment.