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I read with incredulity state Sen. John Hoffman's irresponsible comments in his opinion piece last week regarding Minnesota's draft End-of-Life Options legislation ("Heed history's warning on aid in dying," Opinion Exchange, Dec. 15). His fearmongering assertions featured triggering imagery and outrageous comparisons to the Hadamar "killing center" operated by the Nazis in World War II; I could scarcely believe it was written by a lawmaker charged with crafting legislation for the citizens of Minnesota.

Medical aid in dying (already legal in 10 states and District of Columbia) is not "suicide," though Hoffman referred to it as such a dozen times. Even less so is it "euthanasia," which, by definition, requires purposeful action by one person to end the life of another. Minnesota's option would only be available to adults of sound mind who are dying (with a double-verified medical prognosis of less than six months to live — most are in hospice) who can self-ingest the medication if suffering becomes unendurable as they near death. American laws are crafted so narrowly that only a tiny percentage of terminally ill people can even meet the necessary criteria to request the prescription. Protections against abuse are written into the law, any form of which would be prosecutable as a felony.

Our troubling times have devolved so far as to include elected and government officials routinely presenting "alternative facts" as truth. In this case, Hoffman is either grievously uninformed as to the actual text of the draft legislation or is purposefully misrepresenting its content to frighten Minnesota citizens. It's hard to say which would be worse.

Tara Guy, Roseville

The writer is a volunteer with Compassion & Choices.

I read with great interest Hoffman's opinion piece on aid in dying.

Hoffman said that "HMOs' health care decisionmaking introduces another layer of complexity. When profit-driven entities are entrusted with determining the allocation of resources and medical care, the risk of neglecting the needs of individuals with disabilities becomes pronounced. Ethical guidelines and oversight mechanisms must be in place to ensure that financial considerations do not override the commitment to the well-being of all individuals, regardless of ability."

I could not help being struck by the irony of this statement. Last year a bill in the Minnesota Legislature would have given Medical Assistance enrollees the ability to choose fee-for-service health care as opposed to managed care in the Medical Assistance program. The proposal was killed just before it was scheduled to pass because certain interests wanted medical assistance patients trapped in managed care. Why? Because they make more money using the managed care model.

The irony here is twofold. First, the Medical Assistance program exempts disabled people from being forced into managed care. Very likely for exactly the reasons that concern Hoffman, who fears that economics will play no small part in shaping health care treatment decisions.

The second part of the irony involves the fact that while the Legislature rightfully protects the disabled, it throws the rest of the Medical Assistance population to the managed-care wolves. The measure that was killed would have saved the state and the taxpayers money while granting people the right to choose their health care. It was killed so certain hospitals could continue to make more money. Not long after the measure was killed, the U.S. Office of Inspector General released a study raising concerns about the dangers of managed care and health care access in the Medicaid program. Perhaps we should ask which hospitals and which legislators were responsible for euthanizing freedom to choose in Minnesota's Medical Assistance program.

David Feinwachs, St. Paul

The writer is an attorney and former general counsel for the Minnesota Hospital Association and former assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.

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Hoffman writes, "At the end of the day, when care is expensive and killing is cheap, which do we think will prevail?"

The senator has alerted us to the slippery slope of government and corporate medicalized "compassion" intended to hide their financial interests in killing expensive, "nonproductive" disabled people. Which reminds one of George Orwell's famous 1946 line, "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable."

The writer is a physician.

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In his commentary, Hoffman begins by seemingly disparaging the legislative process. I am sure that he has spent time trying to massage his favorite legislation in order to recruit reluctant support toward passage. His complaint here seems disingenuous.

He then moves on to invoking Nazi atrocities as a bulwark against any discussion of the medical aid in dying movement. Unfortunately, this attitude by a member of the DFL caucus will go a long way to derail any hope of this bill passing or even receiving a genuine hearing. He mischaracterizes the concept of death with dignity by using the word "suicide" a dozen times. He also fails to mention that another Nazi favorite was starvation, which is currently the only legally acceptable method for hastening an inevitable death for a terminally ill patient. Very compassionate indeed.

In addition, he demonstrates his lack of bedside bona fide by mentioning that palliative care for the management of pain would render all other aspects of end of life care moot. Finally, he seems to imply that the folks in the cubicles at UnitedHealthcare will be making decisions to pull plugs in defiance of the ADA, instead of paying for colonoscopies.

And please, stop using the slippery slope metaphor as a negative. Buck Hill just opened.

David A. Plut, Minneapolis

The writer is a retired physician.

So Dennis Anderson doesn't much care for crossbows, "killing machines" as he calls them, being utilized by the everyday deer hunter ("Crossbows undermine spirit of bow hunting," Dec. 15). They were OK for the elderly or the disabled, but healthy young hunters should choose to emulate Fred Bear, who basically invented the sport.

Really? Ya think maybe American Indians didn't take a crack at bow construction and deer hunting? While I respect Bear for his revolutionary bow construction and hunting, he was about 100 years behind American Indians. And if you think Bear's tactic of waiting silently still for a deer to get close enough to shoot was such an amazing skill, consider Native Americans using their bows to kill 1,200-pound bison while riding full speed on horseback. Not trying to take anything away from Bear, but come on.