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It took more than five years, but the outbreak of “death panel” hysteria — a national embarrassment fueled by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — finally appears to be ending. This week, the Obama administration again proposed expanding a compassionate, common-sense policy: having Medicare pay medical providers to advise patients on advance care planning. Medicare is the federal government’s health insurance program serving Americans age 65 and up. It is eminently reasonable to have elderly people think through end-of-life planning with trusted medical providers before a medical crisis occurs and family members must make rushed, anguished decisions about what their loved ones would have wanted. Anyone who has watched an older parent or other relative decline intuitively understands this. (7/10)

Many people who are terminally ill, or rendered helpless and virtually lifeless by injury, would if they could limit their end-of-life care and spare themselves the prolonging but ultimately hopeless treatments available with modern medical science. Doctors should be able to counsel them as to their alternatives while they are able to make decisions. That does not constitute a “death panel,” but rather a fully informed choice. Some people might choose to use every medical alternative available, and that ought to be their right. But others, realizing the treatment likely would not change outcomes, might decide to pass on some treatments. (7/12)

Nearly six years have passed since former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin turned end-of-life counseling between doctors and patients into a toxic political football. ... Fortunately, the dark days of slandering commonsense counseling are over. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2016, doctors will be paid by Medicare to counsel patients about options involving end-of-life care. Counseling is entirely voluntary for patients. The assumption is that the more patients understand their options, the more likely medical costs will come down as patients opt out of expensive medical interventions that don’t add to the quality of their lives. The counseling helps discern what type of medical care patients want as they approach the end of their lives — the minimum to be made comfortable or all-out intervention at any cost. (7/12)

As Medicare’s announcement last week of plans to reimburse doctors for end-of-life discussions shows, a once hidden conversation about medical autonomy and the downsides of life-support technologies is exploding into the wider culture. In five states, medical aid in dying is now legal, and bills permitting it have been introduced in legislatures in more than half of the other states. As with same-sex marriage and marijuana, the question may be not whether the laws will change, but when. I support freedom of choice. But after shepherding my parents through their last years, I doubt that legalizing aid in dying alone will end the current epidemic of unnecessary deathbed suffering. (Katy Butler, 7/11)