Posted on 06/19/2005 8:19:40 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Just when it seemed that every liberal commentator on the Terri Schiavo case was starting to sound like Barney Frank, the great Joan Didion published a long and remarkable article on the case in the quite far left New York Review of Books of June 9. Frank, of course, took the occasion of last week's Schiavo autopsy results as yet another opportunity to denounce Republicans as "this fanatical party willing to impose its own views on people."
For those of you still somehow unaware, "imposing their views" is a semiofficial Democratic meme or code phrase meaning "religious people who vote their moral views and disagree with us." Didion, on the other hand, cut through all the rhetoric about imposing views and said the struggle to spare Schiavo's life was "essentially a civil rights intervention." This is a phrase of great clarity, particularly since Democrats have a long track record of protecting civil rights and Republicans don't. Behind the grotesque media circus, the two parties were essentially switching roles. In the first round of public opinion--the polls--the GOP took a beating. But in the long run, the American people tend to rally behind civil rights, and the party that fights to uphold them is likely to prevail.
On the "rational" or "secular" side of the dispute, Didion wrote, there was "very little acknowledgment that there could be large numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as 'fundamentalists' or 'evangelicals,' who were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it." Amen. There was also little admission that this was a "merciful euthanasia" controversy posing as a "right to die" case. Many of us understood, as the autopsy has now shown, that Schiavo was severely damaged, but a national psychodrama built around the alleged need to end a life without clear consent is likely to induce anxieties in all but the most dedicated right-to-die adherents.
"The ethical argument" Didion did not conclude that ending Schiavo's life was a wrongful act, but she seemed to be leaning that way. She wrote: "What might have seemed a central argument in this case--the ethical argument, the argument about whether, when it comes to life and death, any of us can justifiably claim the ability or the right to judge the value of any other being's life--remained largely unexpressed, mentioned, when at all, only to be dismissed."
That issue was slurred and muffled by the media and by shrewd, though completely misleading, right-to-die arguments that distracted us from the core issue of consent. George Felos, the attorney of Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, told Larry King, "Quality of life is one of those tricky things because it's a very personal and individual decision. I don't think any of us have the right to make a judgment about quality of life for another."
Here Felos piously got away with adopting a deadly argument against his own position by presenting it as somehow bolstering his case. This can happen only when the media are totally incurious or already committed to your side. Michael Schiavo made a somewhat similar eye-popping argument to King: "I think that every person in this country should be scared. The government is going to trample all over your private and personal matters. It's outrageous that these people that we elect are not letting you have your civil liberties to choose what you want when you die." Americans were indeed scared that they might one day be in Terri Schiavo's predicament.
But Michael was speaking as though Terri Schiavo's wishes in the matter were clear and Republicans were determined to trample them anyway. Yet her wishes, as Didion says, were "essentially unconfirmable" and based on bits of hearsay reported by people whose interests were not obviously her own--Michael Schiavo and two of his relatives.
One hearsay comment--"no tubes for me" --came while Terri Schiavo was watching television. "Imagine it," Didion wrote. "You are in your early 20s. You are watching a movie, say on Lifetime, in which someone has a feeding tube. You pick up the empty chip bowl. 'No tubes for me,' you say as you get up to fill it. What are the chances you have given this even a passing thought?" According to studies cited last year in the Hastings Center Report, Didion reminds us, almost a third of written directives, after periods as short as two years, no longer reflect the wishes of those who made them. And here nothing was written down at all.
The autopsy confirms the extraordinary damage to Schiavo and discredits those who tried to depict the husband as a wife-beater. But the autopsy has nothing to say about the core moral issue: Do people with profound disabilities no longer have a right to live? That issue is still on the table.
Now I know where Jerry Springer gets his guests.
What is"force feed Terri forever"?
If I may hazard a guess, I reckon you mean the normal care that the home gave her for years. Liquid nutrition through a tube in her stomach. She lived for years like that. Add on that her real family - mom, dad, etc. wanted her out of that place so they could "force feed" her and love her until her time came to die.
Alienating 2/3rd of the Americans??? Who fricking cares? Read your history. Received wisdom is that only 1/3 of the colonists supported the revolution of 1776.
...According to Florida Statues, only the terminally ill (6 months or less to live), are allowed admittance to a hospice...
That is a standard Medicare requirment. No doctor in his right mind would have stated that Terri had 6 months or less to live. In fact she was in that Hospice for 5 years, and undoubtedly would have lived much longer.
Fraud and slow murder for money. Terri would be physical evidence of the fraud, were it proven that she was no longer declining, even under the most minimal of care.
Some coincidence that the lawyer (death goul Felos) who fought to put her to her untimely death once sat on the board of that Hospice.
Actually, she had much less than that.
Terri was placed in a hospice soon after Judge Greer ordered her feeding tube removed. She had every right to be there.
Who's fault was it that she remained there for five years? Who was filing lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit?
(Hint: It wasn't Michael, or Felos, or Judge Greer.)
"Whose fault was it that she remained there for 5 years"
Woodside Hospice is at fault since they accepted her with the feeding tube already in if they were billing Medicare. That would be fraud.
Medicare would not have accepted her for hospice because PVS is not a billable diagnosis.
Now, can you tell me if she was on Medicare, or did this come out of her own pocket?
I think there is a good chance it was the former, since Suncoast owes over 14 million in fraudulent Medicare charges.
If you can shed more light on that, have at it.
...Terri was placed in a hospice soon after Judge Greer ordered her feeding tube removed....
Show me where a court order to remove a feeding tube qualifies a patient for Hopice under Medicare guidelines.
Aren't court orders subject to appeal unless it is one from the U.S. Supreme Court?
Be mighty short sighted of our government (Medicare) to ignore that possibility, not to mention the Hospice.
In addition, to bill Medicare, it requires three signatures. The attending physician, the patient or legal guardian, and the Hospice.
Show me the proper signatures and then you can say she had every right to be there, as you claim.
I don't think you're going to be able to do that.
The hospice was picking up the bulk of her care. Medicaid covered the rest.
...The hospice was picking up the bulk of her care. Medicaid covered the rest...
Uh huh. And did the hospice pick up the bulk of her care from their own pocket, or from Terri's funds?
Medicaid doesn't pay for hospice. Medicaid doesn't pay for anything unless you have spent down your personal worth to practically nothing (thought they may have if fraud was being commited).
Show us the receipts of who paid for what.
From their own pocket.
"Medicaid doesn't pay for hospice"
Correct. Medicaid was paying for Terri's medications.
"Medicaid doesn't pay for anything unless you have spent down your personal worth to practically nothing (thought they may have if fraud was being commited)."
Terri's lawyers set up a special-needs trust which then allowed her to qualify.
"Show us the receipts of who paid for what."
I got your receipts right here.
Another question. Why did Judge Greer seal Terri's financial records from Florida State Officials? To my knowledge, they did ask for them.
...I got your receipts right here...
Oh, I see them now. Yeah right.
Tell you what, I'm willing to wait a while and see what goes down with Suncoast Hospice as far as them being legit, or frauding.
So far, it looks like they are frauding.
I'm not aware of any other times that he may have done this. What's your source on this?
"Mike Bell, a company spokesman, said the not-for-profit did not have to repay any money. The investigation, which involved several hospice care providers, "led to clarification and directions going forward," he said."
-- washingtonpost.com, 3-23-05
I going with "careless legit".
A living will is, like any other document. merely evidence of a present desire. We cannot write the future in advance.
I just read "Becoming Justice Blackmun," by Linda Greenhouse. What starles me is how smug the Court was in its thinking, that they had the right to overturn the abortion laws of more than 33 states because THEY represented "advanced" or "progressive" opinion. So sure of their role that they even overturned a new and liberal Georgia law because it did not for far enough. Then they went adhead and virtually dictated terms to all the state legislatures. Again and again they were surprised that the states resisted their "guidance" and did what they could to thwart them. Such is the attitude of the legal elite. They cannot conceive that they might be wrong, because everyone they know thinks as they do. Caiaphas was not more blind than they.
That you would force my family to bear the financial and emotional burden to care for my brain damaged body, all the time them knowing that I didn't want to live that way, is unconscionable.
The life insurance money, the retirement money, the savings account, all to pay for my children's education and a decent living for my wife -- gone. Gone to pay the lawyers, the hospital, and the hospice.
Thank God this is still America where I have the constitutional right to refuse medical treatment and to tell busybodies like you to go $%# off.
And what if your family wants to bear this burden? That's the heart of the Schiavo case.
DCF petitioned Greer to unseal the financial records for their investigation. He refused.
http://www.theempirejournal.com/614051_greer_seals_inventory_of.htm
I'm sure they would, but that's not the issue. The issue is my wish not to live in a brain damaged state with no hope of recovery. You would force me to do so, and place this burden on my family.
(Besides, we don't know for sure if the Schindlers would want to bear the burden without the $700,000, now do we?)
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