Canadian Health Care Officials Deny Infant Life-Extending Procedure, Order Him To Die Instead
We could argue about whether or not this child should have its plug pulled. We can debate the cost of any additional procedures or treatment and whether or not they’d be worth the cost in terms of life extended.
But the point here has nothing to do with those considerations. The point is that the government, and not the child’s parents, are calling the shots. Which is what happens when the government runs health care.
This, quite frankly, is what death panels look like:
The Canadian hospital under fire for ordering parents to remove their young son from life support because he is a vegetative state has backed down and agreed to one of the family’s requests: to let the boy die at home.
London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, issued a statement Monday afternoon saying that it will bring 13-month-old Joseph Maraachli to his family’s home, but it then insists that staff members remove the boy from a respirator, possibly giving him only minutes more to live, the London Free Press reported.
“London Health Sciences Centre is and always has been willing to organize and pay for a medical transfer home to Windsor (where the family lives) for Baby Joseph, accompanied by LHSC physicians and staff,” the hospital said.
But the hospital still will not agree to the parents’ request to perform a tracheotomy on Joseph, a measure the hospital calls needlessly invasive but the family has said helped their older child who suffered a similar condition live another six months.
Maybe the Canadian government is making the right decision in this case or maybe they’re not. But we know in cases like these that the government isn’t going to be infallible. That they’re going to make mistakes. And when they make a mistake and order someone off life support when in truth they could have been saved, do you want to be the one being unplugged from the machines? Or your child?
The world can be a cruel, unfair place. At times people may not be able afford or obtain the sort of care they or their loved ones need, but better to have fate in your own hands than to have to rely on some government board to make the right decisions.
Tags: death panels, government health care
