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red states rule
10-12-2009, 05:39 PM
This will be our health care system if Obamacare become the law of the land. Rationed care, and senior citizens will pay the ultimate price




Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton’s daughter, Christine Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, on January 11, says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.

Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was astonished when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.

Ball insisted that her mother was not dying but her objections were ignored. A nurse even approached her to say: “What do you want done with your mother’s body?”

On January 19, Fenton’s 80th birthday, Ball says her mother was feeling better and chatting to her family, but it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding.

Fenton is now being looked after in a nursing home five minutes from where her daughter lives.

Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in palliative medicine, is concerned that other patients who could recover are left to die. He said: “As they are spreading out across the country, the training is getting probably more and more diluted.”

A spokesman for East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Patients’ needs are assessed before they are placed on the [plan]. Daily reviews are undertaken by clinicians whenever possible.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6869646.ece

Insein
10-13-2009, 08:15 AM
Scary isn't it? You would think this is from fiction novel but its cold, hard reality of government run healthcare. There is only so much money to go around and cuts have to be made somewhere.

What I find the most hypocritical is that the elderly organizations like AARP are in lock-step with the government while the elderly suffer. Even before this healthcare bill has been passed, the medicare cuts to help pay for it are already hitting. My wife's father who is turning 70 this year just lost his medicare coverage because he was in the lower income brackets. Why would they cut the low income elderly from medicare? Because they can. Where's they AARP looking out for people in that situation? Yet when Bush wanted to actually do something about Social Security before it failed, they raised holy hell about him wanting to kill the elderly and take their money. Not a peep from them about the medicare cuts that actually did take benefits from the elderly.

Definitely scary.

red states rule
10-13-2009, 08:21 AM
Scary isn't it? You would think this is from fiction novel but its cold, hard reality of government run healthcare. There is only so much money to go around and cuts have to be made somewhere.

What I find the most hypocritical is that the elderly organizations like AARP are in lock-step with the government while the elderly suffer. Even before this healthcare bill has been passed, the medicare cuts to help pay for it are already hitting. My wife's father who is turning 70 this year just lost his medicare coverage because he was in the lower income brackets. Why would they cut the low income elderly from medicare? Because they can. Where's they AARP looking out for people in that situation? Yet when Bush wanted to actually do something about Social Security before it failed, they raised holy hell about him wanting to kill the elderly and take their money. Not a peep from them about the medicare cuts that actually did take benefits from the elderly.

Definitely scary.

Bottom line is, Obamacare will NOT be able to save money on the healthy. The old, and the sick will be the ones who will "save" the government money

Those who want Obamcare either do not believe it, or know it is true and do not care