Former Wisconsin governor and US health secretary Tommy Thompson offered up an intense psychoanalytic take on the thorny issue of end-of-life care this week, saying that “guilty” children who ignore their elders then overcompensate at their deathbed are responsible for spiraling costs.
“What happens? Mother or father or grandpa and grandma, you’ve been away, you haven’t done very much. Children come home, mother or father’s on their deathbed, they feel guilty because they haven’t being paying attention to mother or father,” Thompson said at a luncheon in Madison. He continued: “Let’s face it. So they say ‘let’s do everything we can for mother or father. Don’t spare the costs.’ I’m not talking about denying anybody anything. I’m just saying let’s let mother and father have their wishes. They may not want to be on a respirator the last six months of their life.”
According to Wisconsin Radio Network, Thompson, who is expected to run for Senate in Wisconsin, “said people need to have durable power of attorney to ensure their wishes are known, and he also said the nation’s medical schools need to start talking about death.”
Democratic group Majority PAC is pouncing on the remarks. While there’s no denying that the glut of health care spending on end-of-life care is a serious challenge, Thompson’s oddly personalized take on the issue is particularly surprising in today’s GOP: a provision in the Democrats’ health care bill encouraging patients to write up living wills to deal with the problem Thompson described was derided by Sarah Palin and other prominent Republicans as a “death panel” and removed from the final law.
