Someone just brought Iowa HF 2305 to my attention. Among several provisions that will further cloud the already muddied waters of end-of-life law in Iowa, it redefines hospice care to exclude palliative care. Go ahead and reread that. I'll wait.
I am hoping someone from that industry--or a lawmaker who supports this bill--will step forward and enlighten us all in how the mission of hospice would be accomplished by deleting its core mission. BTW, I get the whole secondary-source-of-revenue argument. What I'm looking for is something that, you know, makes sense from the perspective of Iowans trying to access safe, competent and compassionate care for themselves or a loved one, when they are most vulnerable.
And for the record, legislators and their lobbyists fabricating new definitions for well-established medical terms does not make them so.
Iowa's laws concerning medical decision making and the use of life-prolonging measures have been an inexcusable patchwork of conflicting and misapplied provisions for decades. If no one cares enough to clean it up for the benefit of consumers, providers and lawyers, can we at least stop adding to the mishmash?