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RCP: Alright, last question -- and it’s a moral and cultural question. As a society, we don’t communicate about death very well, but it’s certainly a component to this discussion. In calling for a national discussion about end-of-life care, Senator Mark Warner recently said, “We leave it to families to resolve these extraordinarily difficult decisions with little guidance.”

To sustain our economic system – among other purposes – will it be necessary to have a more straightforward and honest discussion about death and how to die without incurring huge cost for our families?

Senator Wyden: Most definitely. As a Senator who objected to the Terry Schiavo legislation going onto the floor of the U.S. Senate because I didn’t want to turn the U.S. Senate into some kind of medical court of appeals, I very strongly favor the kind of discussion Senator Warner is talking about.

I also note that Senator Rockefeller who chairs the Health Subcommittee has done yeomen work on end-of-life care issues. I think his work is going to be part of any comprehensive reform package. The fact is that these end-of-life issues involve a very difficult mix of ethics, morality, religion, and personal values.

All issues for the individual it seems to me. We’ve tried to do this in the Healthy Americans Act in our end-of-life section. It provides as many choices as possible to American families. We do not want the federal Government in the position of dictating to families what ought to be done or setting up intrusive federal bureaucracy as the arbiter of these end-of-life judgments. We ought to be adopting policies that empower families and empower patients to make choices rather than have their care -- their lives -- dictated to them.

Full Transcript of the RCP-Wyden Interview