Compassion & Choices recently endorsed a number of bipartisan bills designed to improve end-of-life care, which are now pending on Capitol Hill:

• The Care Planning Act  makes it easier for doctors and patients to have necessary conversations to determine the best options for care as we approach the end of our lives. The legislation furthers efforts to strengthen end-of-life care by developing quality measures, promoting public and provider education, and improving portability for advanced planning documents to to ensure patients’ choices are honored.  

• The Personalize Your Care Act aims to increase portability of advance directives and promote public awareness of advance care planning.

• The Compassionate Care Act would provide federal support to educate patients and healthcare providers, develop core end-of-life care quality measures and test innovations in advance care planning.

• The Removing Barriers to Person-Centered Care Act waives burdensome Medicare regulations so healthcare providers can take better care of people with advanced illness.  It allows more pilot programs to  allow people to receive hospice care and curative treatment at the same time, even for their terminal condition.   

“It’s really gratifying that this year there we have various bills that are very much focused on end-of-life care,” says Compassion & Choices Federal Affairs Director Mark Dann. “People clearly don’t have the irrational ‘death panel’ fear anymore. We – and the public – have been clamoring for real change, so you’re hearing more about these issues in a reasonable way in the media, and you have more bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers are clearly listening to their constituents.”

Track the progress of these bills and learn more about our legislative work at our Federal Programs page.

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