Nothing that becomes a wide spread news story on TV and Fox News happens unless someone is pushing it.
Hospitals kill people every day through accidents, negligence or just unexpected complications.
About 10 years ago, the case of Terry Schiavo was the darling of the Right Wing Right to Life movement. Despite it being clear that most of her brain had died and turned to mush, her parents mounted a legal battle to keep her body alive over the objections of her husband.
Now we have the case of Jahi McMath being pushed by the national media for some reason – she was 13 years old and went in to have tonsils removed and somehow wound up brain dead. Her parents don’t accept that and think God will perform some miracle and she’ll wake up.
Glenn Beck is the radio host most out front on demanding that Terry Schiavo be kept on a feeding tube. Lars Larson was another loud voice along with Sean Hannity.
Michael Savage was particularly hyperbolic – accusing people who disagreed with him of being Hitler supporters.
The chicken has come home to roost. Any attempt to point out differences in the amount of brain damage will be heard as making excuses to let a black girl die by the people who fought to keep Terry Schiavo alive.
Queen to rook 8 – your move.
What do you think the end game is?
If the parents of this child want to keep her alive and don’t mind paying for that service, why should anyone take that choice from them?
Look how long the family has kept Ariel Sharon alive. This girl’s family deserves no less.
I think it unlikely the parents have the millions of dollars it would take – other than the possible proceeds from a malpractice lawsuit. No story I’ve found include information about where his mom or her stepdad work, although they claim they have insurance, but don’t mention with what company.
The good news is that with the ACA in place, she can be issued a new ACA compliant health insurance policy with unlimited lifetime benefits -the facility taking her would be glad to pay the $200 a month premium for the family in order to milk the insurance company for millions of dollars – except that she has this preexisting condition that this is ummm…. legally dead.
Time for President Obama to issue a waiver, don’t you think?
It is a tragic situation for both the victims and the families. I’m sure someone would be willing to keep her body alive and sit with her all day so long as they were paid.
Call it a death panel if you wish, but I do not wish to see my taxpayer or insurance premium money diverted to that when there are other children that need to have their tonsils out and can not due to financial reasons.
Very sad situation.
I am just glad that is not a decision that I have to make. It is very sad.
Compare and contrast
3 year old dies following dental surgery
Why the hell would a dentist do root canals on baby teeth?
Well, surely money has nothing to do with it!!!
An important detail to this story – grandma is a nurse at a Kaiser Permanente hospital and started doing things to Jahi like sucking out blood which may well have been why this went so wrong
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oakland-8th-Grader-Brain-Dead-After-236015681.html
That is going to undercut any lawsuit – I guess the family’s position will evolve that they should never have been allowed in the recovery room.
In Haiti they keep the dead, alive, which are called Zombies. Perhaps the family needs to call in a top-notch witch-doctor to see what affect they can have. Or in the alternative, they could pick-up on the ‘sucking out the blood’ angle and bring in the Vampire element.
All ‘dark’ humor aside, maybe we are witnessing the ‘death panels’ at work. It’s about time we quit wasting money keeping people alive, right?
“Keep Hope Alive” – Jesse Jackson in the 1980s
http://pic.pimg.tw/raindog/1213591672.jpg
Well, that was the original question – why is this specific case getting national attention and who is pushing it?….
The fact that she was black surely is part of it.
The ACA requirement that insurance cannot impose a lifetime cap on benefits is probably another part.
I seem to remember a movie called Coma where dead people were warehoused kept connected to machines to milk the system for the profit of evil corporations
I thought the original questions was Huckabee or not Huckabee.
No doubt there is racism in society and in the media and this is an excellent example of it, Art. On the other hand, there is the “Law of the instrument” aka “Maslow’s hammer”:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/msnbcs-al-sharpton-mentions-race-215-times-on-tv-in-2013/article/2541695
I’m a bit more partial to “to a carpenter, the solution to every problem requires a hammer” – making the connection that it isn’t just because you have a hammer in your hand, but that you have training and experience. There is a tendency among computer people to think that the solution to every problem is a more complex and elaborate computer system – so now nurses and doctors spend all day typing information into computers, which nobody will ever have the time to read or use – and failing to do things like washing hands between patients to reduce the spread of infections.
wash your hands, then type on a dirty keyboard
Eventually the keyboard will be clean!
“One hand washes the other.” … perhaps it relates to selling keyboards.
Then we have the related Japanese proverb “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”0