Allow me to point out that, like your post said it's ONE HOSPITAL that's being forced into setting up a "death panel" not the entire state. But there's a few things that have been left out of the story.
$1:
KEY FACTS
Starr County Memorial Hospital is the only hospital serving the county on the Texas border with Mexico, which serves a large Hispanic population and has seen its Covid-19 cases balloon from 8 to 17 and then to 29 after Texas reopened its economy beginning in May following coronavirus shutdowns, becoming one of the first states to do so.
Hospital President Jose Vasquez, in a virtual online call with journalists, a recording of which was reviewed by Forbes, said the hospital has been given extra personnel from the state and federal governments but still has insufficient resources, and is “establishing an ethics committee as well as a triage committee that are going to be in charge of reviewing each one of these cases that need hospitalization.”
He said if a patient, particularly someone with a significant underlying medical condition, needs “mechanical ventilation to survive we have to start making a triage evaluation and [determine] who has a better chance to use, in a beneficial way, all of the resources versus who is a patient that because of chronic medical illness does not have the chance to survive.”
Vasquez’s comments, reported earlier by the Border Report, were met with shock and alarm on social media and called to mind the false suggestion by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obama Care, would include“death panels” that would be making life or death decisions.
Vasquez said some badly ill Covid-19 patients have been transferred to hospitals outside of the county, and in some cases outside of the state, a pattern he said is not sustainable and could lead to “those patients who most certainly do not have any hope of improving going ...thousands of miles away dying alone in a hospital.”
Vasquez, other members of the hospital board, hospital administration and the Texas Department of State Health Services could not be reached for comment by Forbes Friday.
“We need to maximize the resources that we have been given, those are not unlimited resources, [and] use the scarce resources on who has a better chance of survival.”
Jose Vasquez, president of Starr County Memorial Hospital
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenrobin ... 55af0e405bSo explain again how this is the Federal and State Gov'ts fault especially since the same thing has been happening de facto all over the country with the only difference being that nobody politicised it?
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Amid growing fears that the United States could face a shortage of ventilators for coronavirus patients, state officials and hospitals are quietly preparing to make excruciating decisions about how they would ration lifesaving care.
The plans may not be necessary, as officials are scrambling to secure more ventilators, which can make the difference between life and death for coronavirus patients in critical condition who are struggling to breathe. Social distancing and other mitigation efforts to slow the virus' spread could prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. But hospitals are already huddling with state health officials to hammer out their policies to determine which coronavirus patients would get ventilators if they run short — essentially deciding whose lives to save first.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-c ... e-n1162721If that isn't a death panel I don't know what is.
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