Bureaucracy everywhere we look.
Now that doctors will be paid to engage in end-of-life discussion with patients, a bipartisan group of US Senators and Representatives want to create an electronic federal registry for advance directives–and pay Medicare recipients $75 to prepare and register their federally-approved directive electronically in a federally-maintained online data base. From the press release:
The Medicare Choices Empowerment and Protection Act would offer a small, one-time financial incentive to encourage Medicare beneficiaries to provide clear legal guidance to their medical providers and family members should they become incapable of speaking for themselves.
With recent attention on the announcement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pay physicians for advance care planning, this legislation would incentivize Medicare beneficiaries themselves to create and register a certified and secure advance directive online.
So, if this passes into law, the HHS bureaucracy will:
- “Certify” the contents of federally-approved advance directives;
- Electronically maintain all the registered advance directives–what could POSSIBLY go wrong with the Feds running a Web site?
- Pay Medicare beneficiaries to engage the process;
- Coordinate all of this with the differing state laws that govern advance directives, and;
- Accredidate ”advance directive vendors.”
Good grief. The Feds can’t manage their current responsibilities! But the Washington technocrats always want more.
This is the beginning of federalizing end-of-life care.