Regardless of how you feel about whether its right to keep a brain dead person alive... consider who should make that decision? The family, or the hospital?
One of the big claims against Obamacare by the right wing was that death panels - hospitals - would get to make these calls. Liberals called that out as the lie it was...
Or so I thought. Turns out if you're black; the conservatives were right.
Jahi McMath went into the hospital for a routine tonsil surgery to help with a sleeping issue. The operation went tragically wrong, and she is now brain dead.
McMath underwent tonsil surgery to treat her sleep apnea on Dec. 9 and was diagnosed as brain dead three days later. She has been hospitalized since.
The Children’s Hospital in Oakland has remained adamant that McMath is medically dead. Officials blasted the family’s lawyer Chris Dolan on Wednesday, claiming that he is dishonestly delaying the girl’s inevitable death.
Terri Schiavo family supporting Jahi McMath’s fight to stay alive
My instinct tell me that as she's black - San Francisco seems to have stopped deciding its newsworthy...
I had to find an update in a UK paper...
The family is fighting the hospital JUST to be able to move her to private care they are going to pay for... The hospital's stance is "we have decided she is dead, you black folks don't get to make that call."
The girl's mother wants to transfer her to another facility and to compel the hospital to allow Jahi to be fitted with the breathing and feeding tubes she would need to be moved safely.
The hospital has refused to perform those procedures because they say it is wrong to operate on a dead body.
Parents of girl left brain dead after routine tonsil surgery MUST settle fight to keep her alive with hospital, judge says
Thoughts below:
This is not about asking the hospital to continue funding or supporting what they feel is a lost patient.
This is not about whether or not that patient should even be kept alive.
Its about who gets to make these choices - when there is NO BURDEN AT ALL on the hospital.
Why should the hospital even have any say in this matter at all?
In the Terri Schiavo case - you had family against family, and the hospitals were merely side players.
Why is Jahi's case so much less important? In this case - a conservative dream come true - the family is united and it is the cold hands of the medical establishment trying to take control away from a family.
A death panel has decided she is dead - and that is that. As the family is not of a privileged status in society, they see no reason to respect their wishes when "rational thinkers" have decided what is best for them...
In other words: if you are black, you can't even be trusted to be rational about when your family members get to live or die...
For colored folks; death panels are real.