RT Journal
A1 Fried TR, Drickamer M
T1 GArnering support for advance care planning
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2010
FD January 20
VO 303
IS 3
SP 269
OP 270
DO 10.1001/jama.2009.1956
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.1956
AB 
As originally presented in America's Affordable Health Choices Act HR 3200, section 1233 entitled Advance Care Planning Consultation described reimbursement for a clinician visit in which a practitioner explained advance care planning, living wills, the role of a health care proxy, and orders regarding life-sustaining treatments.2 This section of the bill was distorted by many politicians and commentators into a mandate by which older and disabled individuals would be forced to forgo life-sustaining treatments. Advance care planning, widely viewed by the medical community as an underused means of improving end-of-life care by allowing patients to exert their fundamental right to self-determination over future events and to ensure that they receive care at the end of life consistent with their values, was thereby transformed into a means for the government to deny individuals the care they desire. How could this have happened?