How horrible.

[velvetpage]

I mourn this woman, younger than I am. I see in this one case the perfect reason why socialized health care is essential to a reasonable and civilized society. This could not have happened in a place where medicine wasn't governed directly by money.

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa051214_lj_african.bb0e76d.html

Comments

[tormentedartist.livejournal.com]

I have to agree.

[winters-edge.livejournal.com]

I don't know a lot about Canada's system, but I do know a lot about how the system works for the uninsured in Texas. The article indicates that prior to getting the notice stating that the patient's respirator would be disconnected in 10 days, she'd been on it for 25 days. Her body was "ravaged by cancer." That means they gave her 35 days of free respirator care while the family attempted to bring her mother over from Africa. That's very expensive, and in terms of free health care- especially in Texas- incredibly generous.

If she'd been in Canada, would they have paid for her to remain on a respirator indefinitely?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Yes. Until she died naturally.

[winters-edge.livejournal.com]

Is that what they do in cases of brain damage as well? It's always been my thought that there was a cutoff point, you see, and that after that, it was those who could afford, got, and those who couldn't, didn't. I have heard it's like that in some European nations with socialized care.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The cutoff point is not cost - it's whether the doctors think there's any point. The families are given a choice about cutting someone off, and as far as I know, the hospitals fulfill their wishes if the person is not dying naturally but is no longer there. The real difference between our systems is that there's no reason for a Canadian to worry about cost at all. We will get hospital care for as long as we need it, as much intervention as we need/want, etc, etc. The only things that depend on private insurance are things like semi-private, ward, or private rooms.

My mom works in a chronic care hospital in Toronto, which includes at least one floor of palliative care patients. I have never heard her indicate that there was a cost issue associated with her patients, or that the government was backing out of some cases to let the hospital (in this case owned by the Salvation Army) take over. Some of her patients have been there for years.

[winters-edge.livejournal.com]

Baylor is a university hospital, and therefore, they don't refuse care to anyone, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay. From what I read, I got the impression that the doctors weren't saying that they wanted more money; they were saying the patient had reached a point where her body was shutting down and the respirator was prolonging her life artificially.

In many ways, our university hospitals are like your socialized care system, as they not only accept patients without worrying about insurance or income, but allow private organizations or individuals to step in and pay for care once the pre-determined medical care guidelines have been exceeded or if there's no money in the individual's family for experimental treatments. That's why organizations like the Shriners exist.

If this had been about money with Baylor, they wouldn't have put her on the respirator at all, and they would have issued a bill saying "we can't continue to provide care without payment." What they did was use a law that allows the doctors to state that the patient's medical condition has deteriorated to the point where they felt it was inappropriate to keep her on the respirator. This is a woman who had been ill a long time, and I am not saying at all that I don't feel horrible for families in these situations. There was a point at which, however, the doctors told the patient's family she wasn't going to get better. At that point, arrangements to have her mother come over should have begun, not upon receipt of the letter from Baylor.

The doctors and residents at universities like Baylor tend to fight tooth and nail for their patients. They are paid less than other physicians, and work much longer hours. If they felt the need to use this law, she was in very dire straights. Additionally, Dallas-FW's not as metro-minded as you'd think. In order to get the approval to do this, chances are they went through some serious legal circles and even met with local representatives, because the religious conservatives there can be a force to reckon with in situations like these.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

...the patient's medical condition has deteriorated to the point where they felt it was inappropriate to keep her on the respirator.

Are doctors the ones who decide to stop treatment when a patient is conscious and asking for that treatment to continue? Should a treatment that is sustaining someone's life be withdrawn simply because the person isn't going to get better? In that case, where is the line drawn, in terms of life expectancy?

If she was going to live another year, conscious and alert on the respirator, would that make it wrong to take her off now? And if that would be wrong, then why is it acceptable to to take her off the respirator days before she died?

A conscious patient being taken off a respirator is euthanasia at the very least, IMO, regardless of their prognosis.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

If they were fighting for her tooth and nail, why couldn't they wait to either let nature take its course, or for her mother to get there? That's what would have happened in Canada.

I can't help but feel something went badly wrong when she was not allowed her dying wish. If she was so close to death anyway, a few more days wouldn't have been a big deal and the hospital might have saved itself a lot of bad press.

[kianir.livejournal.com]

Our preventive care is a hundred times worse than our emergency care.

[paka.livejournal.com]

It's ludicrous and sad to you.

To us, still reeling from a governor willing to break the law and a religious right railing to try and save a woman without enough brains to scrape together a fragment of this lady's last thoughts, it's downright horrific.

And when you consider that the obviously brain dead lady was Caucasian, and the obviously cognizant lady wasn't, especially after other events of the past year, it's nearly impossible not to scream about the Republicans' unspoken racism.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it could be classism - that is, discrimination against someone because they are poor. The Schiavos et. al. definitely were not that.

It could be racism, though. It could be a combination of both. I don't know enough about Texas to make that judgement.