What an absolute nightmare of a statute. I am at a complete loss how any prospective patient, regardless of their personal wishes, could support this HMO chief financial officer's fantasy. Time to steer clear of Texas!
See my post 14. We had this fixed in the Delissi/Duell bill.
What about the family insisting on ventilator support, over and over, for a patient whose lungs are eaten up with cancer, causing the need for multiple chest tubes?
How about a mother who believes the Sun is her child’s father,and insists on ICU ventilator support even though the child’s genetic disease prevents his bones from growing?
How about the family that insists on keeping the patient on a ventilator, dialysis, medicines to keep the blood pressure up as it also closes off blood vessels in the fingertips, toes, and is part of the reason that dialysis is needed?
How about the family that insists on ventilator and dialysis in the ICU rather than Medicare-funded home care (with ventilator and dialysis) for a comatose patient when the daughter is an ER doc in the same town?
Or the family who refuses to transfer their mom to the state that the daughters live in - because they want mom in the hospital, rather than a nursing home?
Or the patient with multiple complications due to HIV who demands blood transfusion after blood transfusion more and more often, when his bone marrow fails?