posted on May 23, 2005 02:55:53 PM
Sure you want government run/approved medical care...socialized medicine?
Want the government making YOUR life/death decisions or your own wishes to be followed?
---
The English Patient
From the May 30, 2005 issue:
Leslie Burke wants to live; the National Health Service has a second opinion.
by Wesley J. Smith 05/30/2005, Volume 010, Issue 35
London
THE MOST IMPORTANT BIOETHICS LITIGATION in the world today involves a 45-year-old Englishman, Leslie Burke. He isn't asking for very much. Burke has a progressive neurological disease that may one day deprive him of the ability to swallow. If that happens, Burke wants to receive food and water through a tube. Knowing that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) rations care, Burke sued to ensure that he will not be forced to endure death by dehydration against his wishes.
Burke's lawsuit is even more important to the future of medical ethics than was the Terri Schiavo case. Schiavo was dehydrated to death--a bitter and profound injustice--because Judge George W. Greer ruled both that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and (based on statements she allegedly made during casual conversations some 20 years ago) that she would not want to live under such circumstances. In other words, Terri Schiavo lost her life in order to safeguard her personal autonomy, though she never made the actual decision to die.
But Burke, who is fully competent, worries that his wishes will be ignored precisely because he wants food and water even if he becomes totally paralyzed. Receiving food and water when it is wanted certainly seems the least each of us should be able to expect. But, it turns out, whether Burke lives or dies by dehydration may not be up to him.
According to National Health Service treatment guidelines, doctors, rather than patients or their families, have the final say about providing or withholding care.
Burke won his case at the trial court level when a judge ruled that denying the tube-supplied food and water a patient wants "would be a breach of claimant's rights under . . . the European Convention on Human Rights." This should be uncontroversial.
But the General Medical Council, the medical licensing authority, appealed, joined by the British government.
Why do Britain's medical establishment and government insist that Burke be denied a right to decide whether he receives tube-supplied food and water?
It all boils down to two concepts that are increasingly intertwined in modern bioethics theory and practice. First is the so-called quality-of-life ethic that presumes to judge the worth of patients' lives according to their mental and physical capacities. Under this view, doctors or bioethicists may judge a life to be of such low quality that it is not worth extending, irrespective of the patient's wishes.
The second issue is money--an especially potent factor for England's increasingly strained socialized medical system.
Accordingly, the secretary of state for health argued before the Court of Appeal that while patients have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment, they don't have a corresponding right to receive it.
Even though the Burke case does not involve high tech medical procedures--he is not asking for a respirator or kidney dialysis, after all--the government claims that the trial court's ruling undermines the authority of doctors to make the "clinical judgment" about whether a patient's "treatment would be of benefit," based at least in part on the question of "the resources which are available."
The right of doctors to exercise such control is "absolutely fundamental to the day-to-day functioning of the NHS."
And besides their own financial problems, much like Canada's health care system, do YOU really want YOUR own medical care...rationed...and out of your OWN control?
I sure don't.
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Four More Years....YES!!!
[ edited by Linda_K on May 23, 2005 03:00 PM ]
posted on May 23, 2005 03:22:48 PM
I don't see a problem. If he has Lou Gehrig's Disease, which sounds similar, by the time he is unable to swallow, his kidneys will probably go into failure and the rest of his body will start shutting down. At this point, I doubt that he'd want to be kept alive.
posted on May 23, 2005 07:30:21 PM
Linda, sorry I will have to read and post to this tomorrow. I think all the senators lightheartiness at saving the sanctity of the senate has rubbed off on me!
posted on May 24, 2005 12:09:37 AM
Take one example, from another country, and use it to prove your point against National Health care.....I don't think so.
First, every health care system has problems, which 40 million people here don't worry about because they can't afford it anyway. These people may think a flawed plan is better than no plan.
Second, We do not have to have an exact copy of another country's system. Some people are capable of learning and developing better plans.
Third, there will always be questions of ethics, there should always be questions of ethics.
Fourth, England's privatization plan for their form of SS didn't do too well either......good reason for not having it ....and it looks like we won't
[ edited by crowfarm on May 24, 2005 12:11 AM ]
posted on May 24, 2005 05:35:30 AMdo YOU really want YOUR own medical care...rationed...and out of your OWN control?
Linda, I think it is already happening inside big insurance firms. The power of HMO's. They make quality of life decisions for people everyday by deciding what treatments are, or are not covered, or how many treatments you can have, or what doctors you can go see. Some plans are better than others, but you will pay for the better plan, too.
posted on May 24, 2005 05:41:55 AM
Yes dblfugger, HMO's do tell you what you can have and what you can't have. Well that you must see them first.
How would the government pat for health care? I certainly am not interested in paying more taxes. So someone in favor of free healtcare for all please tell me where the money will come from?
[ edited by crowfarm on May 24, 2005 12:11 AM ]