Florida mull how to ration ventilators

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nat...387,full.story

"Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases.

The plan, which would guide Florida hospitals on how to ration scarce medical care during a severe flu outbreak, also calls for doctors to remove patients with poor prognoses from ventilators to treat those who have better chances of surviving. That decision would be made by the hospital.

The flu causes severe respiratory illnesses in a small percentage of cases, and patients who need ventilators and are deprived of them could die without the breathing assistance the machines provide."

I hope we never see this come to fruition. Quite an ethical dilemma. What do you think?

Has "it" begun already?

Did the family pay the bills incurred after 60 days? If not, why not? I hate to be cold but insurance is a cold game. That's why insurance companies must be gotten out of the health care picture.

As for who gets scarce resources - who says vents are scarce? It is not anywhere possible for our great nation to be short of anything. Manufacture more. Import more. There are plenty of ventilators to go around.

If the H1N1 pandemic becomes as severe as the media makes it out to be (which I highly doubt - JMO), there is going to have to be some sort of triage process. That's nothing new and has been practiced on battlefields pretty much since time immemorial.

You save the ones whose odds of making it are better. That's not meant to sound crass or unfeeling; it's just the way of the things in an emergency situation such as described above. That's not to say one life is 'more important' than another; it's an issue of resource allocation. I pray it never has to be put to the test over H1N1.