Rick Santorum's Lies re: Euthanizing of Dutch Seniors

For more than a decade, right-wing activists have engaged in a whisper campaign about health care in the Netherlands. Common statements have included faux-horror at the use of cost-benefit analyses in assigning treatment, criticism of corporate-sponsorship of hospital wings, and rumors of the forced euthanization of the elderly.

But the most recent instance of uneducated Euro-hating spewed forth from Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who has caused an international storm with baseless lies about the treatment of hospitalized seniors in the Netherlands. In a speech before the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri on February 3, Santorum said:

“In the Netherlands, people wear different bracelets if they are elderly. And the bracelet is: ‘Do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands but half of the people who are euthanized — ten percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — half of those people are enthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, they will not come out of that hospital if they go in there with sickness.”

Santorum’s outburst most likely stems from his inability to understand a compassionate euthanasia law passed by The Netherlands over a decade ago. The law set forth a complex process which requires that two separate doctors diagnose an individual’s illness as incurable. The patient must have full control of his or her mental faculties, and must voluntarily and repeatedly request to die with the dignity afforded under the law. As a follow-up, a commission made up of yet a third doctor, a jurist and an ethicist must verify that the requirements for euthanasia have been met. In essence, it is a law that permits the medical community to assist a patient in the last days of their lives in accordance with the patient’s will.

The law was adopted after the publication of a 1991 study entitled the Remmelink Report, which found that a tiny number of hospital deaths (fewer than 1%) might be seen as “involuntary;” even in 59 percent of those cases, the physician had previously obtained some information about the patient’s wishes. In the vast majority of cases, “Life was shortened by between some hours and a week at most,” and the decision was discussed with relatives and with other medical colleagues. In nearly all cases, according to the report, “the patient was suffering unbearably, there was no chance of improvement, and palliative possibilities were exhausted.”

As few in number as these cases were, The Netherlands chose to adopt a set of guidelines for the health profession to follow in all cases. Today, the number of deaths attributed to patients and physicians following this procedure amounted to 2.3 percent of all deaths in the country. More than 80 percent of the patients were suffering from cancer, and almost 80 percent died at home, making the process only minimally different than the American approach of “allowing” patients to die at home, often with Hospice Care to minimize suffering.

But somehow, Rick Santorum blithely reported that half of Holland’s elderly were being sent to involuntarily death chambers. And as for those heart-rending “Do Not Euthanize me” bracelets - Well, they don’t exist, except in the minds of some of the right-wings more eccentric fiction-writers. A website known as Right Wing News published an article last year that claimed that over 10,000 Dutch citizens such cards. Their source was the Louisiana Right To Life Federation, who obtained their “information” from the Nightingale Alliance, an anti-euthanasia group. But this group claims it has no such actual figures.

In a statement from the Dutch Embassy, “According to the Ministry of Health, ‘Do not euthanize me’ bracelets do not exist in the Netherlands.”

Ironically, just one month ago, on December 20, 2011, the free-market-based Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank that follows health care issues and is often quoted by Republican politicians in the US, analyzed the Netherlands’ health system. They applauded The Netherlands health delivery and insurance system as a model system ("Are the Dutch Crazy Capitalists?"), and recommended that Canada reform its own system by adopting Holland’s approach. They concluded:

“…[I]n addition to achieving universality, choice has become one of the fundamental characteristics of the Dutch system…Under our current system, Canadian families cannot access insurance that best suits their medical needs. We can learn a lot from countries like the Netherlands but we can’t afford to wait much longer.”

Meanwhile, Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold has lost all patience with Santorum. Feingold, who served with Santorum, responded by calling Santorum "extreme," and "hateful. " “Santorum is possibly the least tolerant person I've ever dealt with. His attitude towards people who are different from himself is shocking."

Onze excuses aan het Nederlandse volk.


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