Posted on 03/25/2020 11:34:39 AM PDT by Morgana
March 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A group of U.S. lawyers have warned that rationing health care based on disability or age during the coronavirus outbreak violates federal civil rights law.
“Federal law requires that decisions regarding the critical care of patients during the current crisis not discriminate on the basis of disability or age,” lawyers representing the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund and the Thomas More Society wrote in a March 23 memorandum. “In this respect, anticipated longevity or quality of life are inappropriate issues for consideration.”
“Decisions must be made solely on clinical factors as to which patients have the greatest need and the best prospect of a good medical outcome. Therefore, disability and age should not be used as categorical exclusions in making these critical decisions.”
Charles LiMandri, Partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, and who also serves as Special Counsel of both groups, served as the lead attorney on the legal memorandum. The memo was prepared at the request of three scholars from prominent American universities.
The scholars requested the legal memo in light of reports that many American state-level authorities are beginning to weigh their options of introducing the rationing of health care based on age or disability, in light of the coronavirus epidemic.
The term “health care rationing” has been touted by some in the mainstream media as something that could become the new norm in the United States should hospital beds become scarce. SUBSCRIBE to LifeSite's daily headlines U.S. Canada World Catholic
In his legal analysis, LiMandri says that trying to justify policies of health care rationing “on the basis of disability or age” in light of the coronavirus would “violate federal law regarding invidious discrimination.”
LiMandri adds that it would also “open up the purveyors of those policies to legal liability which will likely be exploited.”
“We’re reading the unthinkable—the Seattle Times reported that Washington State and hospital officials have been meeting to consider how to decide who lives and dies,” commented Thomas More Society Vice President Peter Breen. “In our nation’s capital, the Washington Post is running editorials about the ‘nightmare’ of rationing health care, as is the National Review in the hard-hit state of New York. The horrific idea of withholding care from someone because they are elderly or disabled, is untenable and represents a giant step in the devaluation of each and every human life in America.”
LiMandri’s analysis cites current federal legislation that would govern matters relating to the denial of medical care based on a patient’s age or disability.
The memorandum cites the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, which “prohibits age discrimination in programs or activities that receive financial assistance from the federal government, including Health and Human Services (HHS) funding”; the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by federal agencies or programs receiving federal financial assistance”; and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which prohibits any discrimination based on disability in the private sphere and by state and local governments.
LiMandri’s analysis says that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) “extends the above protections against discrimination based on disability or age to individuals participating in any health program or activity administered by HHS or that receives funding from HHS.”
As of March 24, there were currently 44,183 cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. with 544 deaths.
In a March 24 opinion piece for LifeSiteNews, Steven Mosher, an expert on China and the President of the Population Research Institute, explained how coronavirus statistics can be distorted resulting in overblown projections.
Terris list ping
But age discimination in jobs is perfectly okiley-dokiley
Ombamites dont care about the rights to life.
If you have 100 patients who all need to be ventilated and only resources to put 75 on ( assuming multiple patients to one vent) how do you decide? a coin flip?
They must not remember Obama’s answer when asked if the elderly mother of the questioner would get an expensive heart surgery under Obamacare: “We’d give your mom a pill to make your mother comfortable.”
At least he was honest. It happens everywhere governments pay for healthcare.
sorry, civil rights are suspended during emergencies, deal with it.
>>>If you have 100 patients who all need to be ventilated and only resources to put 75 on ( assuming multiple patients to one vent) how do you decide? a coin flip?
You have a few options: first come first served, $$$$, or death panels.
right now everyone is hiring at walmart, krogers and several other places. Get in and get senority
You decide on the one big most acute medical need, That’s how. You don’t get to play this game of the 80-year-old only has 10 more years left so they’re less important than the 40-year-old..
You don’t get to use who you think is more valuable is a metric. You can only use medical needs. As much as that pisses off collectivist jerks.
Okay okay I feel you so old people don’t get a ventilator.
List of really old people
Ruth ginsburg
princess nancy
prince harry
Hitlery
Bloomberg
Gloria Steinmen
Soros
chucky shumer
DID I MISS ANYONE?
please ad to that list
Medical people love to play this white life is more valuable game. Every one of them would make sure they’re all elderly relatives got the best of care. Octogenarian politicians forget the very best of care. So the position is bullshit when they say we can’t waste resources on elderly people.
Anyway, maybe the 40 year old is a low life who walked out on his family, he is a deadbeat, and a general really bad person. Are they really more valuable that the decent 80-year-old business owner patriarch of a good family?
Age is a very poor way to decide the value of somebody’s life
That should read ...which life is more valuable game
Way too many medical people would be quite happy being a nazi at the train depot, making selections. They breezily move from medical decisions into social decision making based upon what lives they think matter most. They do the same with abortion.
And news flash. Most of the medical community is extremely leftist. Want them to find out you are MAGA over 60? A surprising number would be willing to give you a lethal injection outright but f it was legal.
Take it to court and try to find a jury that won’t toss you and your clients out after 2 seconds of deliberation. Go ahead, try it.
it’s not about age it’s about chances of survival. If the 80 year old also has, diabetes and liver failure that means that the chances they will come off the vent alive are small, whereas the 40 yr old without diabetes and liver failure has a better chance of survival.
In other words, if you put the 80 year old ( with above conditions there is a high chance even with ventilator support they will still die) on the ventilator instead of the 40 year old then it’s highly likely they both die. Just getting put on the ventilator doesn’t guarantee survival.
That’s not how triage works — if you think the 80 year old is less likely to survive than the 40 year old, you chose the 40 year old
they will get everything till after they are dead
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