Canada slides further down the slippery slope…
…of death panels. And Adam Goldenberg applauds.
The “experts and wise community members” that make up Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board can overrule a family’s decision about whether to continue life support for an ill member. It’s a cost-benefit ratio analysis in which society has an interest, and Goldenberg points out that Canadians “tend to have more faith in our government and our bureaucratic processes than Americans do in theirs.”
He also notes that at present in Canada and the US, such disputes are decided by judges:
When these family members disagree with a patient’s doctors, and when the doctors are nonetheless determined to act, the dispute generally goes to court, where it can take months or even years to resolve. That is how it works in other Canadian and American jurisdictions, anyway.
But—at least as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong)—in the US judges decide disputes between family members about end-of-life decisions, a la the Schiavo case. Unlike the Canadian case, the type of disputes that send these cases to courts in the US are not ordinarily between the family and doctors. In the US, the family gets to decide, although the doctors can advise and give their medical opinions about what would be best. As far as I know (and again, please correct me if I’m wrong) the only reason doctors were involved in the Schiavo case was that Schiavo’s husband wanted the tube removed, not kept in place, and since there was a question as to whether her physical state would have warranted that, doctors testified.
But the Canadian case Goldenberg is describing is one in which the dispute is between the family and the patient’s doctors, where it’s the family that is trying to keep the tube in and the doctors who say it should come out. And since the government has an interest in the monetary cost of keeping the patient alive, it gets a say, too, in order to protect its finances, not just as some supposedly impartial arbiter in a dispute. That’s the slippery slope down which conservatives do not wish to slide, and which is a consequence of more government involvement in health care reimbursement.
Goldenberg ends with a swipe at Sarah Palin:
When humanity demands haste, and justice demands expert knowledge, Ontario’s death panels offer a solution””whatever Sarah Palin says.
Ah, but Palin never indicated that death panels don’t offer a solution. She’s well aware that they do, and are an almost inevitable outcome of the liberal mindset and increasing government control of health care. She thinks they are the wrong solution, an unconscionable intrusion by the state into decisions that should be up to the individual and the family.
Of course, that’s an oversimplification too. As I wrote in a previous post:
I agree…that Obamacare would mean that the government will be involved more and more in all sorts of health care decisions about how to allocate scarce resources, and that worries me a lot. I also believe that some entity would have been making more of those decisions as time went on and health care became more and more expensive. That’s been happening anyway, with health insurance companies often being the decision-makers.
I don’t know whom I trust less””the government or the health insurance companies. No, actually I do: it’s the government, sadly enough.
When health care is incredibly expensive and families can’t pay out of pocket, the person holding the funds has a say or the whole system goes kaput and becomes unworkable. That’s the sad reality.
When people pay for your standard of living and protect you from threats, it’s a kind of relationship where the power is unequal. The Left clothes themselves in the propaganda that they fight for equality and only wish to redistribute power and wealth for the little guy.
It produces obedient serfs and scared slaves, but not much else in terms of economic prosperity or individual decision making.
Also from the article: Modern medicine increasingly allows us to extend life indefinitely, and so the question is no longer whether we can “play God,” but when, how, and who should do so.
Okay, so now it’s just hunky-dory to play God; no onus attached.
The author of the piece is a young law student, so maybe that can be the excuse for his breezy callousness throughout. But Slate doesn’t have that excuse and should be embarrassed to have published it.
The bit of cognitive dissonance here is that liberals think it’s all fine and dandy that we subsidize everyone’s life choices, at least up until age 70 or so when it starts to get a bit messy.
its easy to see what is coming
as its never any different
other than maybe the fashions that clothe
Mass exercises at a Chinese school
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3r2cCq3jT8
and its this machine like order where no one can do what htey want and get to the paranoid controlling them
Rungrado May Day Stadium
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnPlbhcjQDY
Fucilazione del presidente romeno Nicolae Ceaușescu e della mogli
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUM1nQeGTXc
Pastor Clenard Childress: The Negro Project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnjCUVgW0hc
THIS is most interesting…
mike wallace (phillip morris) presents SANGER (And ayn rand)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3U3NcCD1lg&list=PLC39ECBA3E8F5E923
“Dr.” Goldenburg swings the “Sarah Palin” reflex hammer at the knees of the knee-jerk Left, and millions of knees jerk in unison.
Ahhh, to hold such a reflex hammer. What power, what predictability, what a thrill.
Don Carlos:
Well put.
It’s like Obamapero giving an order and watching the legions Obey.
In a true free market health system it is the consumers who are in control. In a socialist system it is the government, which means the distribution of services is a political matter.
It isn’t simply that socialism means giving government the power to take care away from grandma. It also means the government decides the priorities of care.
Where to invest? AIDS research or breast cancer?
What to cover? Birth control? Type 2 diabetes?
Who to cover? Illegals?
Neo:
“Unlike the Canadian case, the type of disputes that send these cases to courts in the US are not ordinarily between the family and doctors.”
There are times when doctors appeal to the courts when they believe the family is making a bad decision for a family member who is not able to make an informed decision, such as a family opposing a treatment (blood transfusion, surgery, hospitalization) for a child for religious reasons.
Jim Nicholas:
Yes, but those are instances where (just as in the Schiavo case, with her husband) it’s the family or family member trying to have the patient die, or refusing treatment for the patient, and the doctors trying to get or continue the treatment. Never the reverse, as far as I know. So the doctors are acting in loco patientis (I just made that phrase up) for treatment rather than against.
The Canadian case is the reverse. I may not have made that point crystal clear, but that is what I meant by [emphasis added]:
ObamaCare is the first step to single payer nationalized healthcare. The Canadian case Goldenberg is describing is one in which the dispute is between the family and State. As the doctors have little autonomy, they are actually medical agents of the State.
The government will decide who lives and who dies and when they die. It will even decide who gets born. Leftists are already talking about euthanasia and infanticide, arguing that a human being isn’t really a ‘person’ until they are 2-3 years old.
“President Barack Obama supports infanticide. During his time in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted against the Born Alive Act, a bill that requires doctors to give care to babies who survive abortions. The following audio exposes Obama arguing against the legislation on the General Assembly floor, where he referred to a newborn baby as a “fetus outside of the womb.””
Eventually, the State will decide the child’s name and whom you’ll be allowed to cohabitate with and even whether you’ll be allowed to procreate. What your job will be and what if any hobbies you’ll be permitted to pursue.
All will be justified ‘for the greater good’. In such a system, control is everything.
Neo, I cannot find a link; but there have been cases where the hospital wants to pull the plug while the family doesn’t.
The cases I remember, in the US, were ones in which the family does NOT have insurance to pay.
I suspect that these types of cases don’t make the news much because they don’t fit the left’s narrative very well.
Charles:
If you can find those cases I’d be very interested in some links. I didn’t think hospitals could do that. Perhaps they can sue to get the patient into some different facility and not theirs. But I don’t think they can “pull the plug” against the family’s wishes.
The only circumstance in which I think that could happen is if they had some strong evidence that the patient had expressed other wishes: for example, if he or she had signed a health care directive and the family was going against it.
Neo; Here’s one case – unresolved because the young boy died; but it isn’t too far off as the hospital was suing to end life support against the wishes of the parents.
This case had a rather interesting twist since the parents believed that death only happened with the stopping of the heart while DC, where the hospital is located, defines death as “brain death.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Dov_Brody
There are other cases that I remember; but can’t seem to find any links. I’ll post them if I do.
But, after reading about this case, how can anyone believe that governments won’t define (or should I say re-define) death to suit their needs rather than the patient’s or the familes needs or desires?
Yea, they mocked Sarah Palin; but she was right – we will see death panels.
Charles:
That’s an interesting and sad case; I’d never heard of it before. It certainly comes closer to being the sort of case I was asking for, but if you go beyond the Wiki entry and read this, you’ll see what made it quite different.
Basically, the reason the doctors had the ability to bring the case was that it was about the definition of death: the doctors were arguing that the boy was legally dead (not in a chronic vegetative state, but actually dead in the legal sense), and the parents were saying he was not dead according to their Orthodox rabbi’s interpretation of religious law. So it was a conflict between the medical and the religious definition of death.
Plus, the hospital had worked with the parents for months, before the child become supposedly dead, to take the boy out of their acute care facility to another place more suitable, and keep him on life support.
Take a look; it’s kind of complicated:
(just as in the Schiavo case, with her husband)
Former husband. He was already married with another girl and kids.
It was something which let me make a decision independent of what Florida’s courts thought.
Ymarsakar,
Excellent point. He was with someone else, and for that reason, shouldn’t have been the one to make the decision. The parents agreed to care for her themselves, at their expense, but the husband basically wanted her dead so he could marry his girlfriend.
All of this seems to get lost in these discussions. And I think it’s on purpose (excepting our hostess, of course).
Florida has solid laws, but an increasingly Leftist judicial presence. Case example, prosecutorial corruption on ZImmerman.
I Callahan:
Those supporting the husband’s position seem to conveniently forget that. Those opposing it certainly don’t.
I live across the water from Ontario, and when Obamacare was first floated as an idea, people joked “Then where will Canadians go for healthcare?” The few times I’ve been to Mercy Hospital in Port Huron, I was in the waiting room with many Canadians. Detroit’s Beaumont Hospital once reported that their ophthalmology patients were about 70% foreigners.
If you’re well enough to travel, you can come to Michigan or Ohio for care. The problem truly is that when the medical panels get involved, your choices are limited. In 2011 there was the case of the Maraachli family who wanted to their son to have a tracheotomy that would allow them to care for him at home until he died. The doctors’ panel refused that option and wanted him taken off life support and allowed to suffocate. Having him transported to an American hospital willing to do the traech wasn’t even considered until Detroit media and pro-life groups added pressure.
Bottom line: any socialist program eventually comes down to three questions.
Who gets to live?
Who has to die?
Who gets to decide?
Our enlightened betters always assume that the answer to the last question will of course be THEM. History says not.
And since the government has an interest in the monetary cost of keeping the patient alive, it gets a say, too, in order to protect its finances, not just as some supposedly impartial arbiter in a dispute. That’s the slippery slope down which conservatives do not wish to slide,
This is no slippery slope to me. As long as it isn’t abusive to the patient, if insurance doesn’t want to pay for treatment (whether its gov’t insurance like Medicare or private insurance like Blue Cross), then the family should pay for it.
I don’t know about Canada but I know for a fact that in the UK, which is known for its stinginess in its single payer system, you can buy private insurance that provides more and better care than the gov’t provides. Many people don’t, though, because they don’t like the cost.
Long story short, it’s not a death panel unless it’s illegal to use your own funds to go beyond the health care system. Now maybe it may feel like a death panel if a family doesn’t want to sell the home, doesn’t want to carry an expensive insurance policy for months and years, doesn’t want to deplete every asset to keep grandma alive for an extra month. I can understand that frustration but just because someone else doesn’t want to pay is not the same as that other person ordering death for someone. Sorry Sarah Palin is still wrong.
Also let’s keep something else in mind, there is no ‘leave the tube in’. We aren’t talking about a fridge that just sits plugged into a wall. Leaving a feeding tube in means constant, daily medical care by professionals.
Even if you have all the money in the world, you still need medical professionals to do the work and they may refuse if they think you’re desires are abusive to the patient. (Granted I don’t have a lot of faith when lots of money is concerned, as Michael Jackson demonstrates, having lots money means you can probably find a doctor willing to do almost anything regardless of its ethics)
Boonton:
So, in this case you’d like to take away the right of everyone but the mega-rich to make this decision about their family members.
Take away a right?
Which right is that? The right to demand stuff for free?
I think I missed that last time I read the Constitution. Did they uncover some writing perhaps on the other side of one of the pages of the original Constitution?
A little bit less snarky answer, what do you think happens today if a hospital says a case is hopeless, but the lift support means $10,000 a week in bills and the insurance company says ‘no’ to that? Whether you’re talking before or after Obamacare that’s going to be a problem unless you happen to have a huge amount of money. Medicaid is possibly the only exception since Medicaid and Medicare, I don’t believe, will ever say no to a hospital asking to bill endless life support.
Boonton:
Of course I don’t think that it’s a right—in the constitutional sense, that is. That comment of mine was sarcasm.
I believe that you yourself argued in a previous comment that, “If [sick] people aren’t currently getting care, then we have a massive humanitarian problem here in the world’s richest country, which I’m sure you’d want fixed no matter what the cost.” So it seems you believe that uninsured sick people have a “right” (again, not in the constitutional sense, but in the sense that it should happen and other people should pay for it) to medical treatment, no matter what the cost to other people. But a family only has a “right” (in the same non-constitutional sense) to ask that same thing for a very sick loved one—in order to preserve a life that means something to the family—if they themselves can pay for it out-of-pocket, even if they already have insurance? Do you believe that, unless a family can pay out-of-pocket for life support for a person who is in a coma, for example, and who is being tube fed or is on a respirator, that doctors and/or the state should be the ones—rather than the family—to make the decision to sustain the person or to discontinue ventilation and/or the feeding tube?
Boonton:
Re your comment at 6:19—did you not read the last couple of paragraphs of my original post? That’s essentially what I’m alluding to when I wrote:
Why is it a matter of trust? Two insurance policies. Policy A says they will pay for anything (given co-pays, deductibles etc) prescribed by a health care professional. Policy B says they will pay for anything like A but will also use their own medical judgement to deny things they think won’t work or are too expensive.
Policy B is no doubt less expensive than A. If you opted for it, it’s not a matter of trust as much as it is simple contract law. With A you’re paying more to never have to worry about negotiating with an insurance company. If you don’t want to pay for that, then don’t. Where’s the ‘death panel’ by either gov’t or insurance here? Whose stopping you from using your own resources to either purchase services directly or pay extra for policies that will pay no matter what?
Boonton:
Policies don’t usually spell something like that out in a way that a person can understand: “we’ll pay for life support in circumstance A, B, C, D, but not in E, F…” They usually have a lifetime cap on expenses, but other than that there’s no policy that says (at least as far as I know) “we’ll pay no matter what, for any illness and any treatment, as long as it takes.”
What usually happens is that there is a statement in the policy that they will pay for hospitalization for so many days, up to a cap of so much, or for a nursing home for so many days, etc. I don’t know of any insurance policy that would be open-ended and no cap, although such a thing might indeed exist.
For example, insurance that pays for cancer treatment often has rules about what is covered and what is considered experimental. Again, I don’t think it’s possible to buy coverage that says any cancer treatment, no matter how experimental, is covered. So the arguments that come up between the patient and the insurance company might involve the definition of “experimental.”
In other words, all insurance policies set limits. The arguments come over the definitions of those limits, when they apply, and therefore what should be paid for. I’m not just talking about end of life care and respirators/tubes, but extreme treatments of all types. For example, for chronic kidney disease that needs indefinite dialysis, Medicare kicks in (even for younger people) after a period of about three years, during which private insurance is supposed to pay. Medicare, of course, has its own rules about treatment.
My point is that either way, limits are set. The question is which entity sets them, and how, and for which reasons, and who decides what happens when the patient or family objects to the decision of the insurance company or other entity.
Granted, but even then you don’t have a death panel.
Consider this, imagine there is no federal involvement with flood insurance and you own a home on the Jersey shore. You very well might be able to buy a policy for covering flooding, but you can’t. The risk is so high no company wants to even bother writing up a very expensive policy.
Now imagine a ‘house death policy’. Gov’t decides to bulldoze all houses on a strip because the risk of storm surge is just too high.
The second case might be considered a death panel. The first would not. Now the reality is it may become impossible for you to own a house there. No mortgage company may be willing to loan to you without flood insurance. You can’t afford flood insurance there, if offered. But strictly speaking it’s not illegal. A person with a lot of money could build a house there and self-insure against flood (i.e. take the risk that if the house is destroyed he has to use his own money to rebuild it).
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