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Originally Posted by orangello
I must say that i cannot think of anyone or any group i would trust to make that decision for our veterans.
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As a Vietnam veteran who uses the VA "health care" system, I can attest first-hand that the LAST people who should be trusted to make any such determinations are the staff in the VA "health care" system. It is strictly a by-the-numbers system, and my perception is that their entire system is founded on the assumption that ALL their clients are senile and/or functionally illiterate. They have no conception of informed consent when it comes to something as simple as prescribing a medication and asking if you have any allergies or other contraindications that might affect the prescription. I had one VA doc prescribe a topical medication to which I had shown a severe allergic reaction a year before, and the doctor's supervisor had told him the first time that I shouldn't be using it. He didn't like being chastised in front of a patient (he was Korean), so he "forgot" to enter the allergy notation in my records.
I also almost lost a foot because a VA ER doc refused to acknowledge that there was an infection. The drill was to look, prescribe, discharge -- to be accomplished as quickly as possible.
The VA system is not really set up to deal with patients as individuals. And when you're talking about something as significant as terminating someone's Constitutional right to self-defense, each person damned well SHOULD be dealt with as an individual.