This blog has visited the topic of futile care policies more than once. These policies allow hospitals to overrule advanced directives and/or the wishes of family members in removing/refusing life-sustaining treatment to someone unable to express his or her wishes.
Of all the states, Texas has given hospitals the most power in these situations. And the hospitals, safely protected by statute, have been aggressive in implementing their power to overrule families in “futile care” cases.
There have been repeated efforts to try to provide more protections to patients and families in Texas. Right now, it looks like the protection is allocated solely to the medical providers (or, I guess, “non-providers” might be more accurate).
Here’s the latest from the Dallas Morning News:
AUSTIN, Texas – Those who want to extend the time some hospital patients may live before their life support is cut off are worried that their proposal is running into a wall at the Capitol.
Legislation by state Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would require life-sustaining treatment to continue for patients whose condition is deemed futile by doctors until a transfer to another medical facility can be arranged, if their family requests it.
Currently, hospitals can stop life support after 10 days in certain cases if the patient is terminally or irreversibly ill and cannot express treatment wishes.
“No other state in the country has a law that Draconian,” Hughes said. “The balance of power is completely shifted against the patients and the families.”
Hughes’ bill is being pushed by Texas Right to Life, a group best known for its anti-abortion views. Groups for the disabled, including the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities and Not Dead Yet of Texas, also back Hughes’ proposal, as does the American Civil Liberties Union.
Got that? NDY, the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, Texas Right to Life and the American Civil Liberties Union all back this bill.
That’s a broad base of support if I’ve ever see one. But the bill isn’t going anywhere.
That’s because the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Hospital Association, among others, oppose the bill.
I doubt those organizations could claim to represent as many constituents as the combined supporters of RTL, the disability coalition, NDY and the ACLU – I will bet that the TMA and THA give lots of money to political candidates in Texas. That’s the simplest, if cynical explanation for the current standstill.
And it doesn’t bode well for the future in Texas. –Stephen Drake
On May 7th, Ellen Goodman’s column on Truthdig was “When rationing health care may be rational”. It floats the myth that there’s too much health care for people who are near “the end”, particularly senior citizens. Comments were mostly “good” from my/our point of view as people with disabilities: that health care is already rationed, etc.
Once again, for some, it’s floating the myth of “do the person a favor” when it’s about money. The Texas hospital cases involving letting kids die without a cause other than money saved by denying treatment makes it obvious, to me. Someone once posted that yes, you get better care if you are rich and disabled, but I’ve been thinking about that: if you’re very rich and have impatient relatives …and rich/”well off” middle class-type parents have been known to abandon kids with disabilities. (A whole separate topic is how society, this one, does not give family support for kids, of all kinds. It’s a “wild west” “you’re on your own”.) [My word to type is “letwits”.]