Tuesday, May 02, 2006 Hey GOP:TX woman's hospital to pull plug The TX "Futile Care" law signed by then-Gov Bush allows hospitals, NOT FAMILIES OR PATIENTS, to decide to "pull the plug" on cases they deem "medically futile." A 54 yr old woman, Andrea Clarke, is slated to have her care terminated by her TX hospital, despite the express wishes of herself and her family to keep her alive. Unlike the Terri Schiavo case, Clarke is NOT brain-dead and wants to live. Perhaps the push to end her life is b/c she is worth more dead to her insurance company than alive. I don't happen to see Bush flying in on Air Force One or Tom DeLay holding a special meeting or Bill Frist diagnosing her via videotape, do you? Of course not. She wants to live. She simply cannot afford the care that will continue her life. The hospital's solution?: Until a few days ago, when the physicians decided to increase her pain medication and anesthetize her into unconsciousness, Clarke was fully able to make her own medical decisions and had decided that she wanted life saving treatment until she dies naturally. A "Cease & Desist" order was delivered to the hospital on Monday, giving Clarke at least 2 more days of life as her family scrambles to find a facility to take her case on, but she's a widowed single mother, so maybe her tax bracket determines the amount of effort pro-life Repubs put into a photo-op, huh? |