Welcome to King George IV's Texas, where Hospitals, Insurance
companies, and HMO's are legally allowed to murder people:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/25/181614/934
The hospital ethics committee met the day before yesterday and
concluded that Andrea's treatment (respirator and dialysis) should be
discontinued. We have ten days to move her from that hospital or they
will pull the plug and let Andrea die.
Andrea, when she is not medicated into unconsciousness (and even when
she is, and the medication has worn off to some degree) is aware and
cognizant. She has suffered no brain damage to the parts of her brain
responsible for thought and reason, or speech. She has only suffered
loss of some motor control.
We received notice of the ethics committee decision the day before
yesterday and we are organizing a protest to take place tomorrow, at
2-2:30pm outside St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital.
the Texas Futile Care Law, describes certain provisions that are now
Chapter 166 of the Texas Health Safety Code. Controversy over these
provisions mainly centers on Section 166.046, Subsection (e), which
allows a health care facility to discontinue life-sustaining treatment
against the wishes of the patient or guardian ten days after giving
written notice.
Andrea's attorney explained it to us this way:
An insurance company negotiates with the hospital how much they will
pay for certain services. Say, for instance, someone in the ICU costs
$10,000 for treatment per day. The insurance company says to the
hospital, Okay, we will pay you $7500 for you to provide that service
to our insured patient.
There's a catch, though. The insurance company will pay the negotiated
amount to the hospital, but if a patient goes on and on, needing that
service, the insurance company begins making noise. This insured
patient is costing them too much; they are losing profit. They begin to
put pressure on the hospital to get that patient off of their books.
The hospital either does this by getting aggressive with the patient's
treatment, getting them well, and discharging them, OR by pulling the
plug on that patient.
In other words, that patient has now become, in terms of profit, both
for the hospital and the insurance company worth more dead. If that
patient continues to receive that intensive care, it costs the hospital
in terms of where they stand the next time they negotiate prices with
the insurance company. The next time negotiations come up, the
insurance company will say, Hey, we would give you the going rate on
an intensive care patient this year, but you gouged us for 90 days on
Andrea Clark last year, so we are lowering our starting point for
payment to $7000, to make up for it.
--
Who wants to bet all those fascist religious nuts who fought against
the wishes of the completely brain-dead Shiavo to be terminated, allow
this *non brain-dead* woman (who has expressed her wishes that she
wants to live), to be murdered?
Such is life in Konfederate republiKan ameriKa.
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary,
in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether
hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the
very definition of tyranny.
-- James Madison
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