CHICAGO (AP) — As a political uproar rages over end-of-life counseling, a new study finds offering such care to dying cancer patients improves their mood and quality of life.

The study of 322 patients in New Hampshire and Vermont suggests the counseling didn’t discourage people from going to the hospital.

The study’s publication in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association coincides with the fight over health care overhaul proposals in Congress.

Some conservatives have called end-of-life counseling included in one version of the bill “death panels” and a step toward euthanasia. A House proposal allows Medicare to pay doctors to chat with patients about living wills, hospice and appointing a person to make decisions when the patient is incapacitated.

In the new study, trained nurses did the end-of-life counseling, mostly by phone, with patients and family caregivers using a model based on national guidelines.

All the patients in the study had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Half were assigned to receive usual care. The other half received usual care plus counseling about managing symptoms, communicating with health care providers and finding hospice care.

Patients who got the counseling scored higher on quality of life and mood measures than patients who did not.

Patients getting counseling often thank the nurses helping them, said author Marie Bakitas, a researcher and nurse practitioner at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.

“They seem to feel a whole lot better knowing there’s someone who’s looking at the rest of them and not just the tumor,” Bakitas said.