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Oh, Brave New Health System! [Dan Collins]

With such bureaucrats in it!

A disabled foster child whose liver is failing has been removed from a Central Florida hospital’s organ-transplant waiting list because hospital administrators fear the state’s shaky child-welfare system cannot ensure he has a permanent home in which to recover.

Shands Hospital in Gainesville removed the boy, 15, from a waiting list for organ recipients after administrators determined the boy’s unstable living conditions make him a poor candidate for a transplant, said Nick Cox, the Department of Children & Families regional administrator in the Tampa Bay area, where the boy lives.

More atrocity: Poor Tom’s a-cold.

Elderly Man Dies After Son Leaves Him In Hot Car
Victim Sat In 110-Degree Car For Three Hours
Suspect Complained Of Being Cold While In Jail Overnight
Reporting
Tony Aiello
PEEKSKILL, N.Y. (CBS) ― An elderly Westchester man died after police say his adult son left him in a sweltering car for hours, CBS 2 has learned.

The victim, identified as 85-year-old Joseph Pressman, succumbed to the overheating of the Suzuki subcompact car he sat in on Monday afternoon. His 48-year-old son, Theodore Pressman, a local bus driver from Dutchess County, is now facing serious charges in his father’s death.

How could someone leave his elderly parents in a Suzuki subcompact car?

30 Replies to “Oh, Brave New Health System! [Dan Collins]”

  1. Techie says:

    It’s nice to know that there is a place reserved in Hell for the person that rubber-stamped this…………

  2. dre says:

    Bureaucrats running your healthcare. Feel the love.

  3. Smarty says:

    But Dartmouth(?) can do multiple liver transplants for an illegal alien who cannot pay??

  4. N. O'Brain says:

    Socialist medicine: a 10 month wait for the maternity ward.

  5. CArin -BONC says:

    There’s something very French about that second story.

  6. McGehee says:

    Government health care: the efficiency of the DMV combined with the compassion of the IRS.

    I think Reagan said that.

  7. Sdferr says:

    Actually, given the mention of bureaucracy, there’s something very French about the first story as well, seein’ as how they invented the goddamn contraption.

  8. sashal says:

    see, under BHO universal system they would have never done that to the boy, no matter if there was no home for recovery.
    They would have found one…..

  9. The Lost Dog says:

    Comment by sashal on 7/9 @ 8:19 pm #

    see, under BHO universal system they would have never done that to the boy, no matter if there was no home for recovery.
    They would have found one…..</blockq

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

  10. The Lost Dog says:

    Comment by sashal on 7/9 @ 8:19 pm #

    see, under BHO universal system they would have never done that to the boy, no matter if there was no home for recovery.
    They would have found one…..

    Stop it, Bozo.

    National health care is not a whole lot different than having someone stick a broomstick up your ass.

    It might feel good, but the splinters are a killer.

  11. The Lost Dog says:

    Uhhh…

    And if you know ANYTHING about “foster homes”, you might have half of a brain.

    Leftard: “Foster homes are cool and enriching. The pond scum that runs them (to get free money ftom the government) are just the nicest, well adjusted people that you will ever meet!”

    I think you should send your children to a “foster home”, and find out that the people that run them are the purest hunan beings in the world.( Or do I mean “Human Blings”?)

    Jeebus! I wish I could find a foster home for my son. I just know that he wouldn’t be packing a gun within a month.

  12. Thomass says:

    That’s a slap to both sides of the face… on mine and/or the individualist; they’re screwing this person (re: condemned them to death) who could have made due… and survived on THEIR wits because they didn’t have a ‘social’ net. Sooo wrong…. can’t deal.. so wrong….

  13. Bravo Romeo Delta says:

    Folks…

    I have to say I’m really, really astonished and vexed by the response to this. It’s obviously clearly easy stuff to manage from a keyboard and an internet away, but if we make the big step of guessing that people might do stuff for a reason (which I think might matter in a democracy) what’s the underlying gig here and why connect the two items?

  14. SmokeVanThorn says:

    Roger, BRD. You can disagree with Shands’ decision, but to assume that it’s an atrocity equivalent to the second story ignores the factors that must be considered by transplant teams in making such decisions.

  15. B Moe says:

    ….if we make the big step of guessing that people might do stuff for a reason (which I think might matter in a democracy) what’s the underlying gig here and why connect the two items?

    That probably not in your best interest to let other people determine your best interest in most cases?

  16. jon says:

    Here’s the problem with transplants: there isn’t enough of a supply of organs. For kidneys, which are pretty simple to get considering healthy people have two of them, the supply if everyone said their dead relatives were donors would not meet the need. For livers, which are more complicated to put in and out and I guess can be split up but it’s much more complex than kidneys, the supply is even smaller since so many liver ailments are out there. And so, many alcoholics, Hep C victims, people who overdosed with ibuprofin, IV drug users, cancer victims, and such die well before their turn on the list. Hearts, lungs, corneas, skin, joints, bone marrow, and other things are also in short supply. So there will always be bad reasons to remove people from lists, and I can’t argue against their reasoning that recovery is an important part to consider when deciding whether something in short supply should go to person A or person B.

    What’s needed is more supply. And here’s how: pay people for their organs. Won’t solve everything, will be misused, will cause trouble and charges of racism, extortion, and a host of similar things. Some of the charges will be true. But people are dying because they can’t get other people to donate their own or others’ body parts, and philanthropy alone doesn’t get people off their asses.

    Right now, to get a liver (from what I’ve heard from a guy who looks like a skinny guy who swallowed a prizewinning watermelon but really that’s his freakin’ liver) you have to be really sick and about to die, but not so near death that they put tubes in to keep you alive since that’s too close, and then they’ll put you on the waiting list. You’ll probably wait three or four years and probably have only two years left in which to wait. I don’t drink as much since I met that guy.

  17. SevenEleventy says:

    Jon, don’t you have a house to haunt. Do you even bother to re-read the shit you write? While crystal meth may keep you up longer to think things over, it doesn’t make your thoughts more rational. Your friends and relatives should plan an intervention. I look forward to seeing you on A&E, not!

  18. SarahW says:

    There’s more to the story, more to the decision to take the kid off the waiting list.

    The linked article kind of glosses over the boy’s mental retardation by suggesting “developmental delay”. Though this point is underplayed in spite of it being the main factor there is difficulty getting a stable home for the boy, it is probably a major consideration in his being dropped from the list…a “both, AND” decision, with the improbability of proper follow-up care and long-term utility of the procedure making it more likely the liver will be “wasted” with tremendous expenditure of resources, and tremendous cost to another life,

  19. jon says:

    SevenEleventy. Someone with a name like that calling me irrational? Next we’ll see someone named Lady de Rothschild calling someone an elitist. Please tell me which bits are irrational, doofus who probably names himself after the place he gets a Slim Jim for breakfast if there are enough pennies left on the counter. I’ll respond to any actual criticism after work and a visit to the Red Cross this afternoon.

  20. Radish says:

    under BHO universal system they would have never done that to the boy, no matter if there was no home for recovery.
    They would have found one…..

    Barack will make you work!

    The Third Amendment specifically says the government can’t quarter soldiers in your home; it says nothing about disabled orphans. Get the spare bedroom ready.

  21. SevenEleventy says:

    Great, I need hear more anecdotal evidence that can’t be refuted. Please, by all means, educate us with your wal-o-text comments. BTW, people have tried to sell their organs on ebay already.

  22. Let me see if I understand this correctly. The state of Florida says, “Our inability to provide services justifies our decision to not provide services. Now die.”

    By all means, let the government take over health care.

  23. Smirky McChimp says:

    Here’s the issue: when supply is limited and free exchange forbidden, then it falls to bureaucrats to manage supply. This they will do by determining who “deserves” the thing and who “doesn’t” This will be done according to a host of justifications, legal, moral, and practical, and will always be heartless to the excluded.

    In other words, the Shands administrators could do no other than they have done. Government administrators will do the exact same thing. And everyone will hate it.

  24. jon says:

    SevenEleventy, did you even read the story you cited? It said the practice was illegal, meaning it won’t get widespread since there are too many hospital employees and donors and receivers unwilling to risk Federal prison time to save a life at no profit to the staff or receiver. eBay may be a great way to make a buck, but I fail to see how your article proves such a thing could work, not work, or do anything other than prove that you are capable of making a rudimentary web search but are incapable of differentiating between a good and a poor source of information. Using a computer is one thing, using it well requires some analytical skill. If you wish to offset my anecdote, use one of your own (which will neither disprove or prove anything) or you could find some authoritative source. A 1999 column regarding one incident written about by some guy with a webpage isn’t the same as a scientific study, an economic report, or even a newspaper clipping. And it might be better–if you really wish to attack my point–for you to find an article that actually discounts my idea. Citing a guy who agrees with me isn’t the thorough debunking you might think.

  25. JD says:

    jon’s anecdote is true unless you can produce an anecdote to the contrary !!!!eleventy!1

  26. jon says:

    No, genius. I said an anecdote is an anecdote. Does it make it true? No, I just used it to back up my general impression that it’s not as easy to get a liver as it is to buy a loaf of bread. If you have an anecdote to dispute mine, you are welcome to provide it, but whatever yours will say does little to offset the truth or falsity of that anecdote. If the guy was full of shit, then say so. If there’s a warehouse of healthy livers somewhere in Orlando, then give an address. I didn’t put forth that information to be the authority on the subject but to put it out there. To quote myself, “If you wish to offset my anecdote, use one of your own (which will neither disprove or prove anything)” Is that really so hard to comprehend? Sadly, yes.

  27. SarahW says:

    FWIW, Jon’s right about liver dispensing. There is limited supply, competing financial interests at play, ethical dilemmas about donation and recipients, and tacit gaming of the system. Google KevinMD transplants if you want links to liver anecdote mines.

  28. SarahW says:

    I guess the hardest truth of all is that “wasting” a liver on a procedure unlikely to result in success or substantially extended life mean someone that could recover almost fully will die. People at priority one on waiting lists for livers die for lack of livers every day.

  29. Is crystal meth ruining your or the life of someone you love?

Comments are closed.