British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
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Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#2Well, this is absolutely crazy... I hope she and her family manage to fight this decision somehow. I get that she's seriously ill, but denying her the option to live for even a day longer is absolutely insane and should be illegal.
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#3> Her deeply religious family have spent their entire life savings on her care and has complained that a “transparency order” requested by the hospital barred their ability to give details on the case to help raise public funds.
This is the most vile part of the British legal system - how it casually gags those involved from talking about it.
Edit: Otherwise, I would highlight master_crab's comment [1] - it's not 100% clear what "denied" means from this article. The BBC has more information [2] - it seems there may be a treatment available some time in the future in Canada, and the patient wants to stay on life-sustaining care in the hopes she survives long enough to get it, and the NHS/hospital is denying coverage for said care. "Triage" is disturbingly absent from both articles - it seems the hospital is making the perverse argument that this is in her best interest, and not a simple lack of resources.
While we don't have all the details, it is the hospital-requested "transparency order" that is to blame for this (the BBC article omits it, but Fox reported it [3]), we should apply the opposite of the benefit of the doubt - assume the information we've been legally barred from having is maximally incriminating.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385072
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66673511
[3] https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-court-rules-teen-rare-disor...
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#4> Her deeply religious family have spent their entire life savings on her care and has complained that a “transparency order” requested by the hospital barred their ability to give details on the case to help raise public funds. This is the most vile part of the British legal system - how it casually gags those involved from talking about it. Edit: Otherwise, I would highlight master_crab's comment [1] - it's not 100…
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Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#5Well, this is absolutely crazy... I hope she and her family manage to fight this decision somehow. I get that she's seriously ill, but denying her the option to live for even a day longer is absolutely insane and should be illegal.
Well, that's the downside of publicly funded healthcare: government pays for your treatment, so government gets to decide if you are worth the expense. Which of course is completely fucked up.
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#6Well, this is absolutely crazy... I hope she and her family manage to fight this decision somehow. I get that she's seriously ill, but denying her the option to live for even a day longer is absolutely insane and should be illegal.
Well, that's the downside of publicly funded healthcare: government pays for your treatment, so government gets to decide if you are worth the expense. Which of course is completely fucked up.
And with privately funded healthcare, there may be no treatment at all. That's even more fucked up.
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#7It’s not clear if she is being supported by NHS or fully private insurance.
The UK does exercise triage on long term cases. The flip side is no country can afford to maintain every patient with a terminal condition indefinitely and doctors are allowed to exercise judgement.
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that's the downside of publicly funded healthcare: government pays for your treatment, so government gets to decide if you are worth the expense. Which of course is completely fucked up.
And with privately funded healthcare, there may be no treatment at all. That's even more fucked up.
Well, there's always a treatment if you have money to pay for it. And if you don't you still have options like various charities, crowdfunding, etc. That's still a better scenario than the court ruling that the best thing for you is to die.
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#9We could fix this by making it a human right to have access to any healthcare you can afford. That would include the ability to import, buy, own, and use anything considered healthcare (including prescriptions, durable medical equipment, consumables, and training to use it) in any of the world's 20 largest nations.
This would end the war on drugs as well.
If I could import Novopen 6 insulin pens from overseas, it would change my wife's life. She is disabled after strokes and can not remember when she gave herself insulin. She also can not write it down. Insulin pens that tracked the times and amounts and kinds of insulin would be amazing. Novo Nordisk refuses to sell them in the USA.
Access to generic drugs from overseas would save many American lives, but greed prevents them from being available here.
Re: British Court: Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will
#10Well, this is absolutely crazy... I hope she and her family manage to fight this decision somehow. I get that she's seriously ill, but denying her the option to live for even a day longer is absolutely insane and should be illegal.
Well, that's the downside of publicly funded healthcare: government pays for your treatment, so government gets to decide if you are worth the expense. Which of course is completely fucked up.
But that's not what's happening - they're not saying "we can't afford to keep her alive" - they're saying "she's incapable of making her own medical decisions because she's not listening to her doctor's advice (which is to die)".