Teri Was A Bad Dream: This Is A Nightmare

What if Teri Schiavo were alive, conscious, fully engaged in her life and surroundings, firm in her commitment to keep living with the aid of a feeding tube (the only assistance she needed) ... and yet was denied that right?

That's basically the story of Leslie Burke, a British man who is fighting Socialized medicine to stay alive. Reading his story, one is first reassured that the fight against Hilliarycare is a good fight:

I was diagnosed with Cerebellar Ataxia. What! Never heard of it you may say, well neither had I. I was not

• told anything about the condition
• told what the likely prognosis was going to be
• told how best to cope with the condition
• how to live with the condition
• given any counselling
• given the name of any organisation that could help
• told if anyone else in the UK had the same condition
• told nothing zilch

The only impression I was given was that I would probably not see my 40th birthday.

Wonderful care ... but nothing compared to what Leslie faced, as the medical system determined for him that his life would not be worthy enough to justify the expense. Here's a summary of Burke's dilemma from a Weekly Standard article:

Accordingly, the secretary of state for health argued before the Court of Appeal that while patients have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment, they don't have a corresponding right to receive it. Even though the Burke case does not involve high tech medical procedures--he is not asking for a respirator or kidney dialysis, after all--the government claims that the trial court's ruling undermines the authority of doctors to make the "clinical judgment" about whether a patient's "treatment would be of benefit," based at least in part on the question of "the resources which are available." The right of doctors to exercise such control is "absolutely fundamental to the day-to-day functioning of the NHS."

If you think it's just European Socialism at work, think again. In Texas, a law based on Futile Care Theory wouldn't quite put a person in a Burke-like position, but it's a step in that direction. As the anti-euthanasia web site Euthanasia.com (that's the previous link) explains it:

Unnoticed by the mainstream press, a disturbing study published in the Fall 2000 issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics reveals how far the futile-care movement in reality, the opening salvo in a planned campaign among medical elites to impose health-care rationing upon us has already advanced. The authors reviewed futility policies currently in effect in 26 California hospitals. Of these, only one policy provided that "doctors should act to support the patient's life" when life-extending care is wanted. All but two of the hospital policies "defined circumstances in which treatments should be considered nonobligatory even if requested by the patient or patient representative." In other words, 24 of the 26 hospitals permit doctors to unilaterally deny wanted life-supporting care.

Don't know about you, but I've worked with doctors on occasion and I haven't met one yet I'd trust to make decisions like this.

Burke's dilemma would simply disappear if private money instead of public health care was involved. But that's beside the point. The point is that socialized medicine will always lead to the risk that decisions will be made to save public money by ending private lives.