Health Care Reform and the Chamber of Secrets
Seriously... Death Panels. Pulling-The-Plug-On-Grandma Clauses. An enemies list. Home health care nurses coming to take away poor families' babies. Seriously? Is there ANYONE out there who really believes this? Ding-Dong... You know, back in the day, decisions whether or not to place a patient on dialysis went through a committee. And, more recently, decisions whether or not a patient met the criteria to receive a heart transplant went through a committee. The decision of whether or not a brain dead patient meets criteria to be an organ donor goes though a stringent algorithm and a committee. And for that matter, the brain death exam itself must be carried out by two different physicians from two separate services. A committee of two, although there are many, many others in the room. Committees are all over the damn place, and they make life and death decisions day and night. In a teaching hospital doctors travel in packs. For those of us actuall...