Maybe this one:
‘Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby’
Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.
Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy – almost four months early.
They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.
Can this sort of thing happen in a privately run healthcare system? You betcha. But there’s an important difference. In a free market health care economy, if your current provider is acting like a jackass, you go somewhere else (or sue the crap out of ’em). But in a government controlled “single payer” system, you’ve got precisely one choice: take the care the bureaucrats offer, or don’t.
13 Responses to “Death Panels? What death panels?”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
. . .and if ya don’t ya pay the fine. This whole Healthcare fiasco makes my blood boil. Even the “compromise” is weighing in at $900 BILLION. For WHAT? The compromise takes out the public option so exactly whatin the hell is the 900G$ for?
It definitely happens in nationalized systems. Look at China. Hell, look at “civilized” Europe, where Sweden has authorized abortions based on gender.
Yep, in “civilized” Europe, if you’re unhappy with the gender of your baby, if it’s not what you “ordered”, you can abort it!
See, I’m not a conservative, I’m not a Christian. I was a left wing liberal once. But today I say: this is going too far.
Well, there is private health care in the UK. I guess their reponse to this lady’s plight would be similar as:
the Leicester study showed that none of the 150 babies born at 22 weeks survived to leave hospital and this did not change over the 12 year study period.
From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1939171/Survival-rate-for-premature-babies-fails-to-improve.html
> I guess their reponse to this lady’s plight would be…
… “We think it is unlikely that your baby will survive. However, it’s your call, and your credit card has cleared, so we will do our best.”
See how easy that is? You want something… just pay for it. Simple.
You want something… just pay for it.
So even when there’s no chance of success whatsoever it’s ok to take someone’s money?
Sounds like fraud.
> Sounds like fraud.
In what universe?
Look: the chances of saving this baby were slim… but not zero. Any attempt at saving the baby likely would have failed. However, if the doctors explained that and the parents still want to make the effort… what’s your problem?
There are long-shot operations carried out all the time. People who have gone missing – kidnapped, lost in the wilderness, lost at sea, swallowed by cults, whatever – are still searched for, even after all realistic hope is gone. Why? Because there’s someone out there who wants that search to go on, and is willing to pay for it.
Additionally: every advancement in medicine tends to come from someone trying to do something that has never been done before. In your worldview, all medical advancement would be the result of “fraud.”
THIS is why I simply cannot take far-leftists seriously, except as a threat to western civilization. They cannot see beyond their blinkered binary worldviews.
Did you not read the story in the right-wing Telegraph link I posted?
No babies survived being born at 22 weeks
THIS is why I simply cannot take far-leftists seriously, except as a threat to western civilization. They cannot see beyond their blinkered binary worldviews.
And you too.
You refer to this decision as being the result of a ‘Death Panel’ when it’s actually medical practice. Also, by calling it the result of a ‘Death Panel’ you try to link it to end-of-life counseling – which it patently is not linked to at all. Your binary worldview prevents you doing a quick check on google to find some facts – as to do so might deny you the chance to rant on this shoddy piece of journalism.
>No babies survived being born at 22 weeks
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterm_birth
James Elgin Gill (born on 20 May 1987 in Ottawa, Canada) was the earliest premature baby in the world. He was 128 days premature (21 weeks and 5 days gestation) and weighed 1 pound 6 ounces (624 g). He survived and is quite healthy.
Your binary worldview prevents you doing a quick check on google to find some facts .
The point of the original posting was that reliance upon “rules” to make decisions rather than reason and informed consent is a feature of government run bureaucracies.
Really Scott?
I was referring to the study published in the Telegraph, which was pretty obvious. Moving the goalposts eh?
So, you’ve managed to find one baby out of billions that survived at 21 weeks and 5 days.
Not statistically significant at all.
However, what is significant is that in the 22 years since his birth James Elgin Gill’s record has not been broken, despite the advances in medical technology and practice since then – strongly suggesting that survivals such as his are extremely rare.
The point of the original posting was that reliance upon “rules” to make decisions rather than reason and informed consent is a feature of government run bureaucracies.
The guidelines (“rules”) are the result of research and analysis. i.e. ‘reason’. You’ll find it’s a feature of most professions.
Your binary worldview prevents you doing a quick check on google to find some facts .
Your need to always be right prevented you from seeing both the childish debating technique you were employing and the stupidity of the “fact” you found.
> Not statistically significant at all.
I’m sure that was a great comfort to Sarah Capewell as the doctors ignored her dying baby. Because there’s nothing better for people than to be treated as statistics.
> The guidelines (”rules”) are the result of research and analysis. i.e. ‘reason’.
Yes, indeed. And hense, “death panels.” You *agree* that such things are appropriate. So why do you argue against what you suggest is appropriate? If someone is statistically unlikely to be saved, *of* *course* the best thing to to just ignore them as they die.
>… the stupidity of the “fact” you found.
A fact neither you nor the journalist who wrote the article could be bothered to find.
Wow Scott!
The cherry-picking child strikes again to salve his bruised ego.
Statistics matter – especially in medicine.
> The cherry-picking child strikes again to salve his bruised ego.
“Cherry picking?” “Ego?” When someone says “such-and-such had never happened,” and someone else points out that it in fact *has* happened, that’s not “cherry picking.”
Dealing with a premature baby is not easy. Women go through a lot of pain and struggle during pregnancy only with the hope to see a healthy baby delivered. But when someone delivers a premature baby it takes a lot of courage to accept the fact and deal with the concequences especially when the doctors do not have a lot of hope for the baby.