Tightening the noose in Texas

The creeping trend to marginalize people who are seriously ill and deny them treatment is manifesting in many laws and states. A Texas sized battle is raging over that dangerous concept called ‘futile care’. 

Texas lawmakers have introduced competing bills that would either scrap or defend the controversial futile care law that has come under national condemnation. The law allows medical facilities to give families just 10 days to find places to care for their loved ones when a medical center refuses treatment.

The statute allows hospitals and other medical facilities that believe a patient is too far gone to help to give their families just 10 days to find another facility that will offer the treatment or lifesaving medical care.

There’s the key problem, that hospital ‘ethics committees’ are changing rules and redefining care according to utilitarian calculations. So a committee that ‘believes’ a patient is ‘too far gone’ to treat, is cutting them off from treatment.

Here’s the battle between preserving patients’ rights in health care as we’ve traditionally known it…..and a system of medical rationing:

The first bill, HB 3325, which would permit an attorney to represent the family or patient at a hearing, give the patient and family a list of volunteers willing to help, and require life-sustaining treatment to continue pending transfer regardless of how long it takes to find a medical center willing to treat the patient.

The other bill, HB 2964, retains the right of hospitals to cut off treatment but extends the time limit a mere four days from 10 to 14 days for the family to find another medical facility willing to provide care.

‘America’s Lifeline’ friend Wesley Smith has been following this:

“The current Texas Futile Care law is a disgrace, permitting star chamber ethics committees to force patients off of wanted life sustaining treatment, with family given a mere 10 days to find another hospital,” he explains. “This often proves impossible because these are expensive patients for which to care.”…

Smith calls HB 2964 “an explicit defense of Futile Care Theory” and says the other measure is “the only bill that would eliminate most of the injustice that is the heart of futile care.”

And this is only one state. Congress is attempting to overhaul the American health care system using the budget process right now, so expect more battles over patients’ rights.