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So when Brusan decides a family's belief is stupid to heck with what the family wants?
The family had made arrangements to remove the child from the care of hospital. It seems the hospital and the courts have decided we are getting our own way no matter what the family thinks.
And so, capitalist health care is a BIG FAIL. You can cry all you want about some of the 7 billion people in this world not getting a million or more dollars worth of health care each. But that has nothing to do with the point at hand...unless you are volunteering to turn over more tax money...much more!
We don't have "capitalist" health care. We haven't for decades.
We have a heavily regulated system, with large subsidies. Hospitals, providers, employers, clinics, individuals. They have all been on the gravy train.
Had that not been the case, I believe costs would be much lower
A related case here in the US is that of Jahi. She was the girl who choked post-op and suffered severe lack of oxygen which left her brain dead. The hospital diagnosed brain death and requested that Jahi be removed from the ventilator. The mother fought against that and moved her daughter to some medical facility in NJ.
Maybe charge people a higher rate for health insurance if they don't agree to sign a do not resuscitate / Extraordinary Life-Sustaining Treatment directive.
If people want to pay extra to keep a kid with no brain alive, or keep grandma alive for 3 weeks longer after she suffers a stroke from which she can never recover let them do it.. just don't make it everyone else's problem.
Maybe charge people a higher rate for health insurance if they don't agree to sign a do not resuscitate / Extraordinary Life-Sustaining Treatment directive.
If people want to pay extra to keep a kid with no brain alive, or keep grandma alive for 3 weeks longer after she suffers a stroke from which she can never recover let them do it.. just don't make it everyone else's problem.
After brain death, the extensive medical support is basically keeping a corpse from decomposing.
Despite EEG evidence of electrocerebral
inactivity, the family was opposed to his removal from life support.
This report describes the brain autopsy of a boy who at age 4 and one half years experienced an episode of fulminant Haemophilus
influenzae type b bacterial meningitis, resulting in massive brain destruction and the clinical signs of brain death.
However, medical intervention maintained him for an additional two decades. Subsequent autopsy revealed a calcified
intracranial spherical structure weighing 750 g and consisting of a calcified shell containing grumous material and cystic
spaces with no recognizable neural elements grossly or microscopically. This case represents an example of long
survival of brain death with a living body.
They definitely can decompose even when they are on life support, when I worked in LE I had to go to the hospital to fingerprint a guy with a gunshot wound. He'd been on life support for a few weeks and he had that unmistakable smell of a corpse. I'm not sure why the family didn't notice it because it was actually quite pungent. I will stop now before I ruin anyone's dinner.
Every life can't be saved. This child may already have irreparable brain damage. What is his prognosis five-ten years from now? Will he need intensive care his entire life? Probably.
Couple current cases I know of. Elderly neighbor on Medicare - 86/87, diagnosed w/leukemia about a year ago. Prior to that lots of heart and lung issues, several cardiovascular surgeries, due to smoking until about 60 years of age. Past year he visits hospital 3x week for transfusions/chemo only forestalling the inevitable. When I talked with him two weeks ago, he said then he's had 88 blood transfusions this past year. We now hear, two days after that conversation, he fell and has been hospitalized for the past two weeks.
Another man - 78 years old on Medicare/Medicaid - alcoholic and drug abuser - hospitalized many times during his life, now hospitalized five times since November - about once a month with pneumonia, heart, kidney, sepsis and other complications. Every time he has been released to a SNF about three-four weeks later he is rehospitalized, in poorer shape with each event. How many times does this cycle need to repeat?
Sounds heartless, but there has to be a rational limit.
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