MARVIN MANDEL, Governor                            3019

Honorable Laurence J. Hogan, the Honorable Gilbert Gude,
the Honorable Parren J. Mitchell, the Honorable Goodloe
E. Byron, the Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes, the Honorable
Marjorie S. Holt, and the Honorable Robert E. Bauman.

Approved April 30, 1974.

No. 33

(House Joint Resolution 34)
A House Joint Resolution concerning

Federal Medicare Program - Terminal Patients

FOR the purpose of requesting that the United States
Congress amend that part of the Medicare program
which unnecessarily forces terminally ill patients
to move from hospitals in which they have been
receiving care.

The Congress of the United States has enacted a
nationwide health care plan. Medicate, to ensure that all
citizens receive decent and adequate treatment in health
care matters.

Although this system of health care is a good one,
an alarming practice has arisen which is vicious and
degrading to human dignity.

Under Medicare, payments for treatment in a hospital
are stopped when it is determined by a certain committee
that any patient is terminally ill and that any further
treatment is unnecessary.

When such a decision is made, Medicare is stopped
and a terminally ill patient is cruelly "shipped out"
from one location to another, sometimes far from loved
ones, left to die.

Everyone should be allowed to face death with
dignity; therefore, be it

RESOLVED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF MARYLAND, That
the Congress of the United States amend the Medicare Act
so that terminal patients are not forced to move from a
hospital during their last moments on earth simply
because they are terminally ill[[, and]] and because the
provisions of Medicare do not extend to patients with
long term illnesses in order to insure that tetter care
is taken of such persons; and be it further