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 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
