In yet another attempt to cut spending and ration health care, Obama has resurrected the most Orwellian of all questionnaires that President Bush had abolished.

Beckwith is reporting this today:

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.”  It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes.  After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use.  Unfortunately, under Resident Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Who is the primary author of this workbook?  Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.”  For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.”  There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?”  There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

The document below was downloaded directly from the Veterans Administration, and the content suggests that both family finances and depression — a non-terminal illness — could constitute Lebensunwerte Leben, or “life unworthy of life.”  Smoke is generally indicative of fire and, although HR 3200 says nothing about mandatory end of life planning, euthanasia, or anything else similar to Germany’s Aktion T4 program — the euthanasia program that served as a precedent for the Holocaust — that there is indeed fire to go with the smoke.  “Your Life, Your Choices” is simply more evidence, and it even suggests that war veterans with depression consider themselves a burden on the society that sent them to war.

Here is a screenshot of Page 21 of “Your Life, Your Choices,” downloaded directly from the Veterans Administration.  As stated in the Wall Street Journal, this document was withdrawn when the Bush Administration saw content that could have come straight from Aktion T4, but Obama put it back into service.  Note that it invites our veterans to define even non-terminal conditions (such as being in a wheelchair or having depression), to which few if any living wills apply, as “Lebensunwertes Leben.”

The questionnaire goes on even further:

This is totally outrageous and must be addressed when meeting with yor elected officials, especially Herseth-Sandlin & Johnson since they tout how they are totally in support of our soldiers & veterans. I am having a hard time swallowing the possibility that they did not know about this as they both have worked closely with Obama since January.

This is disgusting and more importantly, it is Un-American and immoral! Our soldiers & veterans lives are ‘PRICELESS’. There is no amount of money that could ever re-pay them for their service to our country.

It is like they are purposely working to lower troop moral. “It’s time to stand up and shout:  ‘Stop This Madness'”

Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin        Senator  Tim Johnson        Senator John Thune