It took some time for a consensus to emerge that, yes indeed, abortion will be mandated under the current version of health-care reform being debated in Congress.

It now appears that euthanasia-counseling and rationing of care may also become one of the sad fruits of this mis-named "health-care reform."

Although one must always be careful of attributing intent to those who have framed the bill, it is troubling that both abortion and euthanasia appear to be skillfully-incorporated into the fabric of the reform being proposed.

RedState contributor Erick Erickson relates a disturbing sentence spoken by a democrat aide who said "probably the best part of the [health care] bill is the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.” Erickson writes:

This seems to prove the argument that the Obama bureaucrats will eventually decide who lives and who dies.

Remember, the Democrats have already put in their legislation a requirement for senior citizens to, every five years, learn how to die with dignity.

Also remember that hospice care is for the already terminally ill. So how will increasing hospice care funding solve “prolonging of life issues” unless the government is going to start putting people who are not terminally ill into hospice after they’ve had their mandatory “how to kill yourself” training.

Fred Thompson recently spoke with Betsy McCaughey, a former New York state officer, about the provision in the health-care bill for mandatory "Advance Care Planning Consultation":

At issue is section 1233 of the legislative proposal that deals with a government requirement for an "Advance Care Planning Consultation."

One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session," she said. "They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner."

The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend "palliative care and hospice" for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death.

Two senior House Republicans confirm the fears expressed above:

In a statement sent to LifeNews.com House Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter [said:]

"Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration’ and other end of life treatments,'" the pair say.

That section "may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign."

"This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law. At a minimum this legislative language deserves a full and open public debate – the sort of debate that is impossible to have under the politically-driven deadlines Democratic leaders have arbitrarily set for enactment of a health care bill," they state.

Of course, such aggressive counceling of the elderly about their so-called "option to die" is gravely opposed to human dignity. This is yet another reason to oppose speedily-passing a bill which, with each passing day, is exposed to promote "reforms" that threaten human life and dignity.

update: Jeff Emanuel has written on "The Downside of a ‘Public Option’: Oregon’s Physician-Assisted Suicide Promotion and Overall Rationing of Care":

"... over the course of this decade, the state of Oregon has put in place a formal procedure for rationing care to patients whose health coverage is subsidized by government (i.e., who are enrolled in some form of the state’s “public option”). To date, they are the only government in the world to have formally done this, though many — from Britain to Canada to states here in the U.S. — work “cost-effectiveness” into their official denials of medical treatment. "