Posted on 10/19/2009 12:51:20 PM PDT by blueyon
Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases.
(Excerpt) Read more at groundreport.com ...
Sounds like triage to me.
You mean ... you mean they lied?
In cases of natural disaster and war, triage is routinely practiced. This is going one step beyond that.
There is no doubt that the coming socialist medicine scheme that they are planning will do this and worse.
A glimpse of things to come. The government calling the shots, deciding who gets care and who is left to die in agony. The government assigning relative value to human life — the same government that allows and funds abortions. The state Surgeon General makes this recommendation. The hospitals all start planning how they will put it into effect. Nice.
OBAMA LIED AND PATIENTS DIED !
Just to play devil’s advocate.
You have the capacity to care for X number of people.
You are confronted with the possibility of an epidemic that presents you with X+Y number of patients.
What kind of triage do you do?
Please do not get drawn up in this leftist trickery. The standard answer is that “Healthcare for Americans should not have to consider alternatives for lack of services. Any other consideration is symptomatic of an ineptly run, by that I mean GOVERNMENT, healthcare system, PERIOD!”
But stories like this come out to prepare the ground for something bigger. It gets people thinking, "Well, yeah, I guess cutting off medical care to old Gran is pretty sensible, I mean, it's just triage, isn't it? We've always done that, right?"
While I share your outrage, consider the following scenario:
Two cruise ships crashes violently while docking in fog at a Florida port. Hundreds are seriously injured. They range widely in ages. They also range in severity of injury and likelihood of survival, and the need/urgency of care. The medical community on the spot has to perform triage. (you’ve likely seen this in movies/TV where the EMTs and docs put a 1, 2, or 3 or A, B or C on the patients’ foreheads.)
My point is that the medical community already has procedures and protocols in place for ‘mass casualty’ and pandemic events. When all CAN’T be treated and/or saved, and frankly some will die sooner/anyway, the medical community already has had the ethical debate about what to do, whom to treat, and sadly, whom to leave un-tended.
While this H1N1! hype is a different specific instance, those in primary and emergency care know they might have to face this tough set of choices one day.
“There’s nothing new about triage in medical emergencies. Why would this be any different? I don’t see anything to get riled up about. “
Me neither. If we end up in a situation where the hospitals are overwhelmed a la 1918 this would be expected and indeed probably necessary. I’d hate to be in charge of making the protocols but would you give the last bed to an 80 year old dying of cancer over a 30 year old with two children and a previously clean bill of health?
Colr me unsurprised by this development.
This is typical of planning for disaster scenarios. You divide people into 4 groups - the “walking wounded” who don’t need rapid help, the ones who need help soon but not immediately, the ones who need help NOW and have a decent chance to survive if they get it, and the ones unlikely to survive.
I’m not surprised they’re doing this kind of planning - I’d be surprised if they weren’t. This isn’t something they’ll go to casually, but when there are no more ventilators, who do you want to have a vent? Someone who won’t survive no matter what, or someone with a chance?
The fact that that this is already "the plan in case of a true emergency" yet put into effect NOW over the much-hyped H1N1 media planted stories from Obama , is not only scary, it is a mere forerunner of what life will be like for us in the once great America, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
‘The plan, which would guide Florida hospitals on how to ration scarce medical care during a severe flu outbreak, also calls for doctors to remove patients with a poor prognosis from ventilators’
The ‘plan’ is calling for it, not doctors. That’s a huge difference, don’t ya think?
They system isn’t overwhelmed. It’s anothe scare tactic.
GET SCARED AMERICA....SO RHAMBO CAN ‘NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE’, EH?
Shouldn’t the ‘plan’ and ‘ration’ be key words in that sentence?!
While I agree that our healthcare system should be able to cope with a massive outbreak, I think we all know that triage takes place whenever resources are inadequate. What complicates the H1N1 scenario, however, is that it’s inevitable that many of those being treated will be illegal aliens, while many of those left to die will be American citizens. That’s not triage; that’s a crime.
Already posted thread.
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