Posted on 10/20/2012 6:21:52 PM PDT by markomalley
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert H. Humphrey
It isn’t often that I open a story with a quote from a liberal but, as a Catholic, I have a great deal of affinity for Hubert Humphrey. As you read this you’ll see just how far the modern left has strayed from the liberalism of FDR, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
Let’s stipulate in the beginning that modern medicine is a business. You don’t have a kindly doctor showing up at your home at 2am to treat a sick child and accept labor or chickens in return. Our hospitals are run by hard edged MBAs. Within the profession we’ve exchanged the kind and compassionate Dr. Ben Casey for the arrogant and abusive Dr. Greg House who knows best and your wishes be damned as the operating model.
As the saying goes, the difference between God and a doctor is that God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.
It is well known that about 30% of medical expenditures occur in the last year of life. I view this a tautological dodge because you usually don’t need a lot of medical care until you are near death and as no one knows which is the last year of their life it is a pretty useless metric… unless you can designate with certainty the last year of a patient’s life and then set out to minimize costs during that period.
Enter the Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient courtesy of the British National Health Service.
In the first stage of the pathway, the multi-professional team caring for the patient have to agree that all reversible causes for the patient’s conditions have been considered and that the patient is in fact dying. The assessment then makes suggestions for what palliative care options to consider and whether non-essential treatments and medications should be discontinued. However, the pathway is not a “one-way-street” and if no further deterioration of the patient’s condition occurs, pathway-based palliative care is halted and all previous treatments are resumed. This occurs for about 3% of patients put on the pathway. The pathway recommends that the carers assess how well the patient can communicate and talk to their family, to check that they understand what is happening and see if their religious and spiritual needs are being addressed. The carers are also expected to discuss the plan of care with the patient and their family.
The programme provides suggestions for treatments to manage any pain, agitation, respiratory tract secretions, nausea and vomiting, or shortness of breath (dyspnoea) that the patient may experience] Staff are pre-authorised to give such interventions as required without further authorisation, usually by subcutaneous injection, so that symptoms can be addressed as soon as needed, without further delay.
On the surface the Pathway looks like a rational way of dealing with patients at the end of life, when comfort is of more use than medical care and a competent patient is under no obligation to accept extraordinary measures to prolong life. Pope John Paul II, himself, decided to decline heroic methods to extend his life when it became obvious that he would not recover. The operative terms here are “competent” and “accept.”
In practice it is an entirely different set of facts. It is a roach-motel for patients deemed to have a terminal condition. They check in but they don’t check out.
Because the Liverpool Pathway is set up to ration care and minimize costs in that last year of life, there are perverse incentives. Primary among them is to aggressively identify patients who aren’t quite terminal and help them out a bit. As we know, when men start assuming the role of God, very little good comes out of it.
An elderly woman died alone after doctors failed to tell relatives they were ending her life on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway.
Olive Goom, 85, passed away with no one by her side after medics neglected to consult with her family about her treatment at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
…
As Miss Goom lay dying alone, staff reassured relatives on the phone just hours before her death that there was no urgent need to visit – even though doctors had already removed tubes providing vital food and fluids.Her family discovered that she had died only when her niece went to visit her and found she was already being prepared for the mortuary. They said last night that they will never be able to stop feeling guilty that no one was there in her final hours.
This type of misadventure seems to be much more the norm than anyone would like to believe as the Liverpool Care Pathway has become an assembly line of death rather than a hospice-like terminal care program.
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.
Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.
He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.
…It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP [My emphasis].
Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.
More tragic is that are those instances in which the patients selected to die really aren’t terminal.
Mrs Fenton, from East Sussex, is still alive and “happy” nine months after doctors declared she would only survive for days, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding, her daughter, Christine Ball, said.
…
Mrs Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Mrs Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was “astonished” when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.On Jan 19, Mrs Fenton’s 80th birthday, Mrs Ball said her mother had lost “an awful lot of weight” but was feeling better, and told her she “didn’t want to die”.
But it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding, Miss Ball said.
Mrs Ball said the fight to save her mother had been made harder by the Mental Capacity Act. “I was told that we had no rights, and food and hydration were classed as treatment, which meant they had the right to withhold feeding. It gave a doctor the power to play god with my mother’s life,” she said.
Mrs Fenton is now being looked after in a nursing home near her daughter’s home.
One can only guess at the number of survivable cases there are among the 130,000 Britons currently in a hospital and marked for death.
So this system really sucks. If you are interested there is a grassroots rebellion going oni in Britain against this appalling system check out this website. But what does it mean here?
Under Obamacare we are on the glidepath to a similar progam being adopted here . For all those who derided Sarah Palin and the “death panels” she was absolutely right. As we delegate more and more responsibility for our medical care to the government, the government will increase its authority over the type and amount of care that we can receive. A system that arguably started out as a humane system in Britain to ease the final days of the terminally ill has devolved into a financially driven program focused on eliminating patients to save money and reduce occupancy rates.
What makes this more unfathomable, and truly accentuates Pope John Paul II’s various sermons against what he termed the Culture of Death, is that the liberal left, that part of our political spectrum which touts itself as compassionate and caring, is the most aggressive in offing those who Hubert Humphrey said were in the dawn and dusk of life: the unborn and the physically infirm. Apparently their interest in those in the shadows only extends to the extent to which they can be inveigled to vote for Democrat politicians.
Good God, this is tragic.
I often think of a picture I saw of a man whose broken arm set itself in an extremely deformed manner because he had to wait soooooo long for medical treatment, but that pales in comparison to this.
If only Bath-House Barry, Pelosi, and all who foisted this on us that Christmas eve were victim to it-—and that goes for all the congresscritters, too.
Ghastly. Like the 16th century, hospital=roach motel. But worse than that, because it’s not just a case of 16th century accidental re-contagion: they’re doing it deliberately.
Someone needs to make an ad with all the things that will go forward in a second Obama term Ie.: ObamaCare, putting 1-2 more radical judges on the SC bench, cap & trade, Dodd-Frank given more sway, Obama bypassing Congress if they refuse to go along with him...even if they overturn his vetoes, he’ll just write EOs till he is either impeached or leaves office, total absorption of all illegal immigrants, with a swearing in to become a democrat if they want citizenship, etc. Actually, I believe he’d pull a Luschenko stunt and say that his re-election constituted the American people deciding that they want Communism from now on and he’d make himself the first dictator and rule until he died. 4 more years to totally destroy the economy, to nationalize all factories and companies, to force people out of the suburbs into the city and not allow cars to be driven to work, etc. I can thin of a lot more, but you get the drift.
Oops! A spelling error...that is Lukaschenko, not Luschenko. Sorry, I should’ve reread that before posting.
1. Of course, Greg House isn’t exactly your model corporate doctor, either. For one thing, he’s not just cranky with the patients, he’s cranky with EVERYBODY. For another thing, imagine him trying to pass the drug test.
2. Whether you call it a “death panel” or not, this is what one looks like.
3. If I were the Goom family, I suspect I’d want to be waiting outside the hospital with blunt objects.
4. Compared to what’s passing for presidential, vice-presidential and senatorial material in the Democrats these days (and particularly what’s passing for senatorial material in Minnesota) Hubert Humphrey is a giant.
Liberals spout platitudes to fool the foolish and gullible.. basically “republicans”.. Liberals believe in nothing.. not even ideology.. Some/most are good actors(hypocrites)..
Even Marx didn’t believe his dribble but used it to fool the unwary.. Thats why socialists KILL the true believers in ideology after the revolution.. Humphrey was totally fooled and bewitched..
They call them useful idiots.. quite openly.. the wise listen and learn..
Democrats are not republicans even many republicans are not republicans.. i.e. useful idiots..
Saul Alinsky in his “Rules for Radicals” are rules for the revolution..
What he does not speak of IS AFTER the revolution..
True believers will be sought after and liquidated..
Most all republicans cannot even fathom this kind of evil..
Thats why they WILL LOOSE if they cannot learn to fathom it..
Anyone thats a democrat is effected.. some more than others..
Obama is a true believer probably.. if not he is WORSE..
Democrats are indeed like the Vampires in the movies..
They are NOT just uninformed cretins.. they have been “BITTEN” in a metaphorical sense..(by someone) they are different...
Myth Romney is not to be trusted he operates quite well with democrats.. maybe only “useful” to them maybe it’s worse than that..
I clicked on the link to see if I could find out who wrote this, as he seems to have a real problem with physicians, I am one and don’t think I am God nor do I know any who do.
I also read some of the comments and there’s a power wielding moderator there threatening someone with banning, for daring to mention the second amendment, in a non threatening, non violent way.
Not a web site I will ever click on again.
By the way, I found no mention of the author, maybe I missed it as I read rather quickly.
Just this evening I listened to a show on the BBC about this. Some of the calls were unbelievable. Many of the relatives were not even told their loved one was put on this “pathway”, and found out after they died.
One woman called in and related how she helped a friend get his “partner” (girlfriend, I guessed) who was suffering from an illness to the hospital. They immediately put her on this pathway, and the woman and her friend objected and the doctor eventually turned her back and walked away from them! They actually kidnapped her from the hospital and brought her to a private clinic. Four years later, she was still alive.
As a Christian, I am not to wish evil on others. It is very difficult when it comes to democrats and Obamacare, including the womyn I passed on the highway the other day...the Subaru with the “I love Obamacare” bumper sticker.
I would like to know the demographics of the physicians in Britain. I suspect many of them are from mudslime countries. Letting non-mudslimes suffer and die would be just fine with them.
Pressure on beds...we got your beds here ....big wards....and an excellent chance of a cross infection to speed things up......
and your attentive nurse.....too bad she doesn't beleive in using alcohol based cleansers.
Nationalized DEATH CARE... the future of us if we don't get rid of the MARXISTS!!!
Yeah...this guy...the plumber...
they told him he couldn't get disability payments because his arm would fit around the back of a pipe.
*British People don’t smile often… And it’s not only because their HC system sucks…: The dental coverage in the UK is a complete disaster… A man pulled out 13 of his own teeth with a pair of pliers.
This man,Ian Boynton, a former soldier, had to pull out his teeth because he could not find a NHS dentist. Iraq War veteran Ian Boynton could not afford to go private for treatment.
Ian Boynton is not the only British who san’t afford getting dental care. 1 in 5 people don’t get any dental care because the cost is way too high. (I thought it was free…)
Logan's Run
Isn't that all of us?
Isn't that all of us?
Morality is a uniquely individual human trait. Morality does not exist in organizations of men, be that a fraternity, a corporation, or a government. It is why the so-called cliche "Character Matters" persists. It really does matter who we choose as a leader or member or leadership.
When we entrust governments to have morality, inevitably we will regret our choice.
I’m the author. I don’t have a problem with physicians per se but I do have a problem with the general attitude in the medical community. I do have a problem with doctors here an abroad who do think they are God. In the Netherlands a board of doctors decides whether or not a newborn with birth defects gets treatment or euthanized. We had Terri Schiavo and other here. And I provide lots of links to what his going on in the UK in the story. That my background and your butthurtness is more important than the actual facts is telling.
Second, we don’t permit on RedState any inference to racism or to armed overthrow of the US government or any hint of encouraging violence. Comments like that are regularly used to try to damage the employment of those contributors who are known. You are completely misrepresenting the exchange.
I don’t know what mention you were trying to find of me. I’ve written at RedState for eight years. I’ve been a moderator for over seven If you click my name you’ll see a list of my posts.
My opinion of you is that you are a total butt hole, now run along and black list me at red state. That was the only time I’ve ever clicked red state, I assure you, it is the last.
You’re just another blog pimp.
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