Ron Panzer is founder and President of Hospice Patients Alliance ("HPA"), a charitable nonprofit patient advocacy organization fighting to preserve the original mission of hospice and health care as envisioned by Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Dame Cicely Saunders: to care for those facing death, relieve their symptoms and allow for a natural death in its own timing.
Ron and HPA are at the frontline in exposing the pervasive infiltration into hospice and healthcare by the culture of death with its bioethically-based policies that are hastening many tens of thousands into death before their time. HPA denounces the widespread victimization of the individual at the hands of health care providers, managed care organizations and individuals within the health care system. HPA affirms the sanctity of life and respect for the individual patient's needs while also opposing any policy or practice that sacrifices the basic dictum of medicine to "do no harm."
Ron Panzer is a nurse who has exposed violations of the standards of care within hospice and other niches of healthcare. He has served as a consultant on hospice for thousands of families, patients, and staff from all over the USA and has been interviewed by journalists for online news sources as well as newspapers, radio and TV. Ron also serves on the advisory board of Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia (http://cureltd.home.netcom.com/). More information is found at: http://www.hospicepatients.org/hospic1.html
Contact: caring@hospicepatients.org
Website:http://www.hospicepatients.org
"The path to the death culture began when doctors learned to think like accountants. As the cost of socialized medicine in the Netherlands grew, doctors were lectured about the importance of keeping expenses down. In many hospitals, signs were posted indicating how much old-age treatments cost taxpayers. The result was a growing "social pressure" from doctors and others, says Arno Heltzel, a spokesman for the Catholic Union of the Elderly, the largest Dutch senior-citizen group, which favors voluntary euthanasia. "Old people have to excuse themselves for living. When they say that all of their friends are dead, people say, 'Maybe it is time for you to go too,' rather than, 'You need to find new friends.'"
Date posted: 2009-08-16
When it comes to promises from the government that things will be "better" under their newly-devised plans, history shows us that they can't be trusted.
Date posted: 2009-08-02
With all the debate about health care "reform," I wonder how much choice individuals retain under the proposed new bills. There is a move to force health care professionals (doctors, nurses and others) to participate in abortions, or abortion counseling, without the right to excuse themselves. They could lose not only their jobs, but also their professional careers.
Date posted: 2009-07-24
As we have been warning, the zealots who are pushing a "right to die" actually seek to impose their values upon those who are vulnerable and to force health care professionals to participate.
Date posted: 2009-05-02
People with a mission are not motivated by status, power, wealth or fame, even though those may come to them. They listen to a "different drummer," and travel a path "less traveled." People with a mission are leaders, though they don't need followers to be who they are. They are either respected or ridiculed, either labeled crazy or inspiring. They arouse hatred or love. And though there are moments of self-doubt and searching, they always come back to serve. No matter what they do, it is done in the spirit of service and love.
Date posted: 2008-12-26
We are at a new crossroad in our nation's history. Which way we turn at this time will determine the future (or lack thereof) of the vulnerable elderly, disabled, exploitable, as well as the born and unborn. There are huge profits being made in health care by ruthless corporate manipulators who publicly tout their "concern" for the "welfare" of patients, while mainstreaming a lethal protocol of patient care denials, mistreatment, and direct intervention to involuntarily end the patient's life. Other agencies cling to the original mission to care and serve.
Date posted: 2008-12-18
Assisted-suicide is just a stepping stone to the real goal of the very active eugenics and euthanasia movement: mandatory death when determined by those in power, just as was done in Nazi Germany during severe economic difficulties.
Date posted: 2008-12-09
The tortuous lengths so-called "ethicists" go to in order to justify their nefarious agenda is never-ending. Though they are true believers in their work (and tell us how "altruistic" their motives are) they sometimes inadvertently admit that they have lied in the past, will lie in the present and future, if it means advancing their cause, and consider mere "people" beneath them, the "givers and takers" of life. These are the judge-jury-executioner types who truly do hold the keys to your life or death, and the life or death of your children or parents and friends.
Date posted: 2008-10-21
The most important task for anyone wishing to solve the problem of death being imposed within hospice is to understand how this situation arose. I spent about 1 1/2 hours on the phone today explaining to a distraught physician why her loved one was killed in hospice with an overdose of morphine and sedatives. She could not understand why any physician would order medications (or any nurse would administer medications) in a way so as to cause death prematurely, before a natural death occurred.
Date posted: 2008-09-22
Death threatens to strike each of us at any unknown, inevitable moment, like Damocles' sword hanging by a thread above, ready to fall suddenly and turn our lives into ashes. Though the certainty of death is undeniable, our most immediate instinct is to do whatever we can to protect ourselves, to live and survive as long as we can. Even animals fight with everything they have to win the daily struggle for life. For them, it's "eat or be eaten!" and they continue to struggle until they can no longer fight, and death swallows them up. Why are we so eager to invite Death's touch and kill our children, our parents, or even ourselves?
Date posted: 2006-02-04
Should health care workers be forced to perform abortion, euthanasia, or assist in suicide if their own religious beliefs forbid such activities? I believe that a health care worker should provide care to people without consideration of their religion, race or gender, but health care workers should have the right to refuse to participate in killing patients! Otherwise, all health care professionals will be railroaded into becoming pawns in the death machine. Those who object would be forced to quit their profession or be fired for refusing to kill. And this is already happening as some nurses, doctors and pharmacists have quit because of the decidedly anti-life agenda moving through health "care" as a field.
Date posted: 2006-01-31
"But what does loneliness or the end-of-life have to do with God's existence or love?" you ask? The universality of loneliness and our certain deaths tell us much about our human nature and also about God's nature. If we were mere physical creatures, how could we feel "lonely?" If we were mere physical creatures, could we be able to communicate with others, or to want to feel "connected?" If we were mere physical creatures, how could we feel love? Isn't this message of Christmas something that can touch all of us as we journey through life, even at the very end?
Date posted: 2005-12-18
Depending upon your perspective, all of this life can be understood as one continuous dying process or as one continuous living process. However, most prefer to live their lives without thinking about the end, without thinking about any of this at all. They do everything to avoid confronting their mortality and are not even aware that they put up mental roadblocks to any reminder of their own mortality.
Date posted: 2005-10-16
Though we cannot with certainty change the world around us, we can change ourselves and choose to salute life. We can then hope, and pray, for the best. I pray that more will join in and lift a glass across the table of this life, as I do, and make a toast, to the family of those who respect life and its Creator, to my friends, to you, and make a toast "To Life!"
Date posted: 2005-07-17
A poisonous philosophy of death is spreading through our nation. Is there an "antivenin" that can neutralize the poisonous culture of death? "Desperate times call for desperate measures," but what measures can help our nation when the poison has spread so far? Will the danger be recognized? Will those who can treat this poison act in time? Will they be equipped to handle the challenge?
Date posted: 2005-06-11
Those who work with the dying witness the waves of challenging losses that arise as death approaches. We see pain on the physical, emotional and psychological level and the anguish of those who are about to lose the one they love. Patients sometimes share their fears and spiritual struggles as they contemplate losing everything they know and face their impending death. There are all sorts of interactions between family members, friends and other visitors. But, contrary to what one might imagine, the dying process is not always experienced as the dark and depressing time many imagine.
Date posted: 2005-05-16
If you choose to deny the "personhood" of any group of individuals, you are stepping into the company of those notorious villains who committed terrible crimes against humanity: the Nazis, the slavers, the Ku Klux Klan, those who massacred noncombatant native American men, women and children, or those who have victimized the disabled, the elderly and others.
Date posted: 2005-05-09
I can't help asking the nagging questions that some continually push away. When not-so-subtle or even blatant pressures are applied to certain categories of individuals in order to "facilitate" their death, is our society becoming more like the Nazi Third Reich than the land of the free?
Date posted: 2005-04-26
Enter any health care setting and your Constitutional rights will be waived under certain circumstances. If you just happen to be the unfortunate victim of severe medical malpractice, you could be sent off to hospice and declared "terminal," rather than having the docs admit their errors. Who will know the difference? And with tort reform sweeping over the nation? Who will care if you are harmed?
Date posted: 2005-04-12
Will they hide behind the skirts of the Legislators? Or will they prove themselves to be honorable, in this case at least? I pray that they act honorably, now. I also recognize that each family is responsible for making choices about how they will or will not care for each other. We cannot just blame others. We must choose whether to honor every life before us, or not.
Date posted: 2005-03-17
Some of you may remember the black and white television sets that were the latest technology just a few generations ago. We now live with high definition television and one does not even mention "color" with regard to TV, because it is assumed, it's a "given." But as outdated black & white TVs are today, so is the so-called "right to die" agenda. It is simply a very old and evil agenda, repackaged with a slick marketing campaign, to slowly, imperceptibly, move the American mood over to the side of death.
Date posted: 2005-03-10
Those of us who feel moved to care for those in need often find ourselves confronted with the harsh realities of this world and the perceived limitations of our own abilities. "How much can we help?" "Will it make a difference?" "What good does it really do," we ask ourselves.
Date posted: 2005-01-16
We cannot erase every problem, disease, pain or crime. But we can do our part. We can do something. It takes will. It takes effort. And it is never easy. Whatever we do ... however we choose to serve, it will always be fulfilling. And we will have the peace that comes with knowing we chose what is right.
Date posted: 2004-12-27
If you are rushing through life, busily doing, getting and keeping, you don't allow the intimacy of caring. You do not recognize the other's world. You live, but are not alive. You "see", but not with open eyes. And so you see nothing that truly matters. You close yourself off from being hurt, yet suffer the worst pain of all. For while physical pain hurts, your loneliness and isolation torment.
Date posted: 2004-09-04
You don't need a thousand dollar seminar to learn that you're supposed to help others and meet their needs. You don't have to think about it. You don't need to be convinced. The attitude runs through your veins.
Date posted: 2004-07-19
Shame is something that people silently endure. It can be inexpressibly painful and something familiar to every health care professional as well as patient. At any stage of life, shame has many faces.
Date posted: 2004-07-06
There is something incredibly blind about those who don't have the slightest clue what life is about, who go through life bulldozing their way into, through and over others around them. And they are convinced they know SO much better than any of the rest of society! Whether they kill one person or dozens, they believe in what they are doing.
Date posted: 2004-06-13
Real compassion for others always involves giving of oneself, even to the point of one's own daily, ongoing suffering, pain and sometimes death. THE Passion of life. There IS something called "passion" and there are the utterly not passionate, the "heart dead." The really "dead" to life are walking among us. They are not "brain dead," but "heart dead," and though they think themselves wise, they do not understand the most basic facts of life! They do not live life and are not "of" life - that is why the culture they have built and promoted is called the "culture of death."
Date posted: 2004-02-13
Our nation was founded upon the principle that all are CREATED "equal." Certainly, the concept of "equality" does not imply "equality" in ability, talent, gifts or individual characteristics. The founders of our nation were referring to an equality of worth in the sight of God who created each life.
Date posted: 2004-01-30
Those who promoted the culture of death in Nazi Germany honored loyalty to the Third Reich. They believed that some people were more worthy of life while others simply were not! They respected principles such as "respect for SOME persons," "justice," and "the greater good of society." They had their own interpretation of what "respect for persons," "justice," and the "greater good of society" meant.
Date posted: 2004-01-19
Why should we be concerned? With 1.6 million people residing in 17,000 nursing homes (11,000 of them for-profit businesses), the opportunity for actual harm to our nation's loved ones is staggering. A recent Congressional study found that 550,000 residents were in homes cited for instances of severe abuse.
Date posted: 2004-01-04