Double Flee A

I talked to the nurse of a lady who "died" here yesterday. She coded (her heart stopped, for all you non-hospital people) and all kinds of doctors rushed in all gung-ho to get to work saving her life, but the nurse protested. After being briefed, the doctors left and the patient died, or better, continued to be dead.

On the surface, I'm aware this story looks a certain way. The simple-minded would say it is invariably our responsibility to our fellow human Schiavo to keep them alive, even though in certain cases it is the opposite. Which is why the staunch pro-lifers piss everybody off so much of the time; they're wrong, don't know what they're talking about, and don't want to know what they're talking about. The nurse, in advocating for the patient, did the right thing by allowing the patient to die. I'll tell you why, and you'll understand why I put the word "died" in quotation marks.

But first, there's another complication. The patient's treatment was being paid for by the state, so for her to go ahead and die would save taxpayers money. Even if she didn't have health insurance she has to be cared for somehow, because it's the law that you can't leave people to die. Some financial realists see the long-term problems with this and would say that it shouldn't be the law, because as health care costs rise and people get poorer on average, this is an unsustainable trend. So what do you do with people who need to go to the hospital, and who, if it weren't the law that they have to be cared for, wouldn't get any treatment? I say go ahead and make it official and socialize medicine already if the practical upshot of the system, as it stands now, is to care for the poor anyway, which ultimately ends up costing more on the state's tab than it would otherwise, and just cut the bullshit.

I get a kick out of thinking about the dichotomy stupidity would create if this woman's case were a Fox news channel rock-n-roll USA main event. Some of the very same people that would, fuming, ask "how dare you evil bastards unplug that living, breathing creature of god's awesome, holy creation?" would also leave the no-insurance-having, financially irresponsible indigent where indigents belong, out in the cold.

The lady effectively died months ago. She's been brain dead all this time and, according to the nurse, had started to rot. When you're a nurse providing health care costing as much as a new car every day to someone who's already dead and is rotting, you have a bird's eye view of the situation, and the right thing to do is let her die.

It's not as much fun as keeping it simple, but everybody's better off.

posted by dale @ 4:25 PM