Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, one of our society's greatest failures is our inability to equip and inform our families at the time of greatest stress and vulnerability: the end of life. Even though Sarah Palin lied about ``death panels,'' I am proud to have been the foremost champion of protecting families and equipping them with the information they need to make those decisions before they are too late to inform those decisions and guarantee their wishes are respected and enforced. No one wants to die in a hospital room but, sadly, too many people do so. Separated from their loved ones, too many are isolated from family and friends in those final hours. It doesn't have to be that way. I fought for years to raise awareness to equip families to protect themselves and their loved ones, and to encourage doctors to have those often difficult conversations to do their part for those patients. I led the battle for the Federal Government to put a value on those discussions. The Federal Government would spend tens of thousands of dollars for a 96-year-old woman with terminal cancer, but wouldn't pay $150 for her doctor to have the discussion with her and her family to understand her choices, how to manage it, and how to make sure her choices, whatever they were, were respected and enforced. I led the battle for the Federal Government to put a value on that protection by adding end-of-life conversations to the list of services eligible for Medicare reimbursement.…”