Comments on: Moving right along: no death panels here, just a death pathway

By: jayne

jayne — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:25:52 +0000

Occam’s Beard,
As far as I’m aware no aspect of the NHS has ever been subject to the Official Secrets’ Act (though laws pertaining to patient confidentiality impact on public disclosure/discussion etc). Regarding ‘Freedom of Information’ (and I have big issues with limitations on its scope here, for example – the BBC’s Balen Report), experience generally suggests that leaking forbidden material to the press gathers an together wider and more interested audience without all that tedious trawling through files, assessing the provenance and accuracy of material. A rent-a-mob. That’s why I tend to digest my news by blogs – even if they can sometimes be really (and deliberately stupid) too.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:11:08 +0000

Hazel Fenton’s alert and persistent daughter managed to get her taken off the pathway, but the daughter apparently had to fight the hospital for weeks before they would give her mother artificial feeding and a chance to live.

The hospital was hoping that she would self-terminate in those weeks. Which is what usually does happen, but not in this case.

Poor Terri Schiavo didn’t last much longer than a few days, afte rall.

By: Occam's Beard

Occam's Beard — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:21:25 +0000

You forget, the English wash their dirty linen in public.

They’ve repealed the Official Secrets Act and passed a Freedom of Information Act? Great news.

By: jayne

jayne — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:15:54 +0000

You forget, the English wash their dirty linen in public. It went wrong, we discuss and argue and are outraged. Changes get made – they’re often too restrictive at first, but then get adjusted again. Care pathways for the dying are a good thing and help ensure a dignified and painfree end – the sort I want when my day comes. I’ve worked with them and the alternatives (which are often not so gentle nor nearly so organised). A mistake was made and everyone is now involved sorting it out. This time it was a relative, often it’s a professional … Is your current system so different? So humane? So bloody static no apparent advance ever needs to be re-examined? I am really bored by Americans parading the NHS as the bogey man alternative in order to turn away their eyes from the inequalities of their own system, now under review. Believe me, we have a long track record of beating ourselves arround the head, but get pissed off when people join the party merely to serve their own agendas.

By: Doom

Doom — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:16:30 +0000

My guess is the pathway is showing the next “logical” step in medical (modern ethical) care. That of ridding the field of any too weak, old, or difficult to treat people. They are merely being emboldened by the US’s seeming embrace of such. Our leaders sure want it. The sad thing is, if they would make if fiscally sound, people would be going for this full out. Thankfully, they haven’t. We still might join the worlds march to health genocide, in spite of the money issues.

If this things gets passed, make sure you don’t need to use it. You will pay for it either way, but just because you pay for cyanide pills through your taxes or “fees” doesn’t mean you necessarily want to take it. Oh, and the plan will see a lot of doctors quitting. Which is part of the plan. It is much more difficult for even interested doctors to tend an overwhelming number of patients. So it goes. No part of this plan is unforeseen, really.

By: logern

logern — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:41:44 +0000

Lordy, Mizz w. she’s almost 40 now.

We’re all in a willing mind
If the men would be so kind
As to wed the lame and blind,
poor old maid

By: Recruiting Animal

Recruiting Animal — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:54:23 +0000

Larry Grossman, a former Minister of Health in Ontario, a province in Canada once said on TV that people use most of their OHIP (Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan) dollars in the last six months of their lives.

Inotherwords, we have a government subsidized health plan and no one is neglecting old people.

One of my own family members was rushed him into a major operation (3 yrs ago) when it was discovered that he had a large abdominal aneurysm.
He was already over 80.

By: CV

CV — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:52:50 +0000

It’s not very much of a leap from the “right to die” to the “duty to die.”

By: House of Eratosthenes

House of Eratosthenes — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:24:28 +0000

[…] I think I’ll place my trust on that issue in the relatively popup-free Neo-Neocon: The Times Online reports the case of Hazel Fenton, a near-casualty of the British health care […]

By: Scottie

Scottie — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:27:03 +0000

Regarding health care in general, I tend to revert to what a certain wise old head once observed:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

In this case, when government is in charge of providing you with health care, that same government now has the ability to withhold health care – for a variety of rationalized reasons.

Ya know, I actually feel better after imagining Logern shoving a tube up their own nose….really, there’s nothing to it- right?