No doubt, you’ve heard the legend about Yogi Berra, the famous baseball player who commented on the end of a baseball game: “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.” It seems Yogi had been to an opera or two…
Making a covenant with aging parents
In early April 1996, occasioned by my mother’s declining health and her most recent fall, resulting in a broken hip, she and Pop decided the time had arrived for them to move from the only house they ever had owned…
Ethics at the end of life: The ultimate ethical issue is whether we wait for death
This is the third in a four-part series on ethics at the end of life. The ultimate ethical issue at the end of life is whether we wait for death or instead hasten it. A massive and sometimes confusing vocabulary…
Ethics at the end of life: The first ethical issue is not who decides but who accompanies
This is the second in a four-part series. Secular Western medical ethics tends to be principlist and procedural. Two crucial core principles in medical ethics are autonomy and informed consent. The affected persons (often shorthanded as “patients,” although we must…
Medicare, end of life and living our theology
Medicare is consistently a wedge issues for both sides of the political spectrum. The issue becomes even more controversial in the reality that more than 30 percent of the cost of Medicare comes in the last year of life. Unfortunately…