- Bang

- I simply don’t think this is a case of right/left. I’d be more inclined to think its legalese/business/CYA driven. Hospitals/Doctors have far to cozy a relationship with Insurance companies/pharmecuticals in general. Its not neccessarily conspiratal, but more likely just as a part of doing business. I say that because you see a lot of CYA policies being instigated these days among all branches of the medical field, from ambulance services on up. Some of it is probably very justified; We’ve become a nation of litigators at the drop of a hangnail. Some of it is dysfunctional inneptitude on the part of duck and run politicians on both sides of the divide, who generally hate to get involved in emotion driven issues. In Terry’s case just look at the three ring circus and mess it caused in Congress, and to what good end. Nada. so you have many layers of emotion, proper and hysterical, CYA, legal, and business, swirling around this whole “right to life/right to die” embroligo.

- Maybe what is needed is a dispassionate third party advocacy group/cabinet office in every state of the Union, that takes the reins of this whole medical survival mess and acts as omnibudsmen and final arbitrator. As an Official body of State gov. they couldn’t be sued, nor would they depend on any one lobby group for any of their funding. I generally detest the very idea of yet another oversight group when dealing with difficult issues, but in this rare case maybe its the only way that both sides of the life and death question can get fair and balanced justice. Just a thought.

- Bang

This is a prime example of how the Republican supporters will support the Devil himself. I was one the staunchest, I know. Edited – insult. –ST.

You are jumping all over Steve, the socialist, and you have NO idea what you are talking about. Like YOU, this WOMAN paid her health care premiums every month!

Edited – insult. –ST

The X Greedy republican 55 years of it!

OBTW, nice slam at 41. Can you make an argument that isn’t another salvo of class-warfare?

- Bang

The Republicans are finished but that means I will have to move. I have no worthy party, anymore.

No way do I fight the ideals of a nutcase Democrat with mental problems gone untreated.

I would take my sister home, it is their fascists law, no choice, but I would sue the grandchildren’s pants off of Blue Cross and every single individual complicit in her death.

Where the HELL is the ACLU….on this one. This law could be fought in court and WON. The ACLU is a crap org.

Via KLo at NRO 3/20/05:

KLO: But according to a source familiar with what went down in Texas, the then-governor signed into law the best bill he could get at the time, improving an already bad situation. Here’s some background explained:

In August 1996 the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article describing procedures then in effect in Houston hospitals. Under these procedures, if a doctor wished to deny a patient lifesaving medical treatment and the patient or the patient’s surrogate instead steadfastly expressed a desire for life, the doctor would submit the case to the hospital ethics committee. The patient or surrogate would be given 72 hours notice of the committee meeting would be allowed to plead for the patient’s life at it. During that short 72 hour period, the patient or surrogate, while preparing to argue for life, could also try to find another health care provider willing to give the lifesaving treatment, food or fluids.

If the ethics committee decided for death, under these procedures there was no appeal. There was no provision that the food, fluids, or lifesaving treatment be provided after the decision while the patient or family tried to find another hospital willing to keep the patient alive.

So under these procedures, the hospitals in Houston were denying life-saving treatment, food and fluids against the wishes of patients and their families, when the hospital ethics committees said their quality of life was too poor. Patients and families were being given only 72 hours after being notified of the proposed denial to find another health care provider.

In 1997 there was an advance directives bill going through the Texas legislature that would have given specific legal sanction to such involuntary denial of life-saving treatment. An effort in the Texas legislature to amend the bill to require treatment pending transfer to a health care provider willing to provide the life-saving treatment had been defeated. When that bill reached Governor George Bush’s desk, he vetoed it, and said he was vetoing it precisely because it authorized hospitals to deny lifesaving medical treatment, food, and fluids against the will of the patients.

But even without that bill, these procedures were still going on. So there was an effort in the next sitting of the legislature, in 1999, to pass protective legislation. Unfortunately, the votes just weren’t there to require lifesaving treatment, food, or fluids be provided by unwilling hospitals. So there were negotiations that resulted in a bill that gave partial protection. That 1999 bill:

first, formalized more protections for in-hospital review
second, gave patients 10 days of treatment while seeking transfer, and
third, authorized court proceedings to extend the 10 days for reasonable additional periods to accomplish transfer.

Now this was not what patient advocates wanted and it wasn’t what Governor Bush wanted. However, it was an important advance over the existing situation of no legal requirement of treatment pending transfer, for any period of time. The votes were not there in the Texas legislature to accomplish a more protective bill. So Governor Bush signed it because it was an improvement over the existing law.

“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.”
—a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
Here in Houston, a woman has been scheduled to …

Because you have no other way of getting what you want, you condescend, call names, belittle and run away calling “Peace” over your shoulder so that you don’t get the treatment you richly deserve. In the old days that treatment would be a coating of tar and feathers with a ride to the city limits on a wooden rail guaranteed to put slivers in the area of your body YOU think with.