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Patient Protection

Strengthening Families, Protecting Life and Promoting Health > Protecting Innocent Human Life > Patient Protection
We support patients' rights by calling on the state legislature to amend the Advance Directive Act to establish due process of law and ensure that a physician's decision to deny life saving treatment against the patient's will or advance directive is not due to economic or racial discrimination or discrimination based on disability. We also support the passage of legislation to amend the Advance Directive Act by requiring hospitals intending or threatening to withdraw life-sustaining treatment against the patient's wishes or their advance directive to continue all treatment and care for such patients pending transfer to another facility.
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This proposal will mandate useless treatment. This pointless waste saves no lives and drives up everyone's health care costs.

Current law provides due process: after the hospital renders a decision, it mandates a 10 day period of continued care to find a new facility. It also allows a state judge to extend this period if it is likely that a willing care provider can be found. This process is generally only started after extensive treatment.

There is no evidence of any death caused by this act other than that which would have already happened due to a terminal state.

Tirhas Habtegiris is the poster child of the counterargument and may be the basis of this law. A poor, black immigrant, her case has been twisted beyond recognition by Democrat-leaning publications like Daily Kos. She was simply a terminally ill, unconscious patient. The facts became unhinged from reality.

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