I thought you said there was never a second signature. So, event the legal loophole was not met.
However, as I understand the Federal regulations of Medicare, *Medicare* hospice funding - and I believe by extension, Medicaid - in order for a patient to qualify, the doctor must say that the patient is expected to die within 6 months due to the disease. Of course, Mrs. Schiavo didn’t meet this criteria at all.
I’m sure that State laws differ, however, medicine does not. If anyone named her “end-stage” anything, he or she contradicted the court and what we know of the medical facts. If so, this is fraud.
The extra “loophole” in her case could have been her insurance. Was she Medicare, at all?
There was nothing so sickening as watching those last few months of her life. I have always opposed using substituted judgment in these cases. Then, the trips to the hospital to remove and replace the tube - I believe there was news of a second removal or near-removal - were abuses of medicine, to me. In the final decrees, Greer refused oral food and hydration as “medical experimentation,” which, again, is not appropriate medically, only under a twisted legal definition.
I felt as though I’d entered the twilight zone when the Federal appeals court was more concerned with precedent and judges than with this woman.
All of which proves that judges and lawyers should not practice medicine.
Well, she was in the George Felos Woodside Hospice. She was approved for Medicaid by petition by Felos and approved by Judge Greer with a still healthy sum of rehab money in her trust fund. Does that help?