> If the government will not allow treatment and there’s no way to pay and you can’t leave the country, you’re finished.
If insurance will not allow treatment and there’s no way to pay and you can’t leave the country, you’re finished.
Side note: private health insurance, private healthcare facilities, and paying out of your own pocket are all possible in countries with socialized healthcare.
Parent poster is talking about the Alfie Evans case.
Alfie is going to die. He has no brain. He was being kept "alive" on life support. The hospital want to end this life support because it's in his best intersts to do so - there's no hope of treatment, and keeping him alive is likely to be keeping him in pain. The parents disagreed with this, and so it had to go to court.
This means there is legal representation for the hospital; for the parents; and independent representation for the child. This is because the child is a human and has rights and his best interests need to be kept in mind.
The parents have rejected the findings of the court, and have made many appeals. They've gone to appeal court several times, the supreme court several times, and ECHR[1] a couple of times.
All the courts agree: it's in Alfie's best interests to let him die, rather than rpolong his suffering when there's no hope of treatment.
Also, all the courts agree that Alfie's parents (and latterly his father) have been given terrible legal advice.
This is causing some consternation in US right-wing nutjobs.
Here are some, but not all, of the court hearings. I might have got the ordering wrong.
An example of the terrible legal advice (from a non-lawyer too!)
---begin
On 12th April 2018 the father went to the hospital with some other people who included a foreign doctor and air ambulance staff. The father had a letter written to him by Mr Pavel Stroilov of the Christian Legal Centre which, we were told, is a campaigning organisation. In the letter Mr Stroilov, who we have been told is not a lawyer, purported to give the father legal advice. He said that it would be lawful for the father to remove Alfie from the hospital and take him to any other place he chose. The previous order made by Hayden J was said not to have circumvented "your parental rights".
The letter, which was disseminated on social media (presumably with the knowledge and consent of Mr Stroilov), stated that:
"as a matter of law it is your right to come to (the) hospital with a team of medical professionals with their own life-support equipment and move Alfie to such other place as you consider is best for him. You do not need any permission from (the) Hospital or the court to do so".
This letter was misleading to the extent of giving the father false advice. We have been told that it had the most regrettable consequences in that it led to a confrontation in which Alfie was involved. The Police had to be called. An application had to be made as a matter of urgency to Hayden J.
The letter gave false advice because the previous decisions made by the courts in this case have directly addressed whether the parents have the right to decide what should happen to Alfie. The clear answer which has been given is that the parents' wishes are not determinative. The court has also expressly decided that removing Alfie from the hospital as the parents wanted was "irreconcilable with (his) best interests" and that his treatment and care "shall" be given by this hospital. To act inconsistently with or contrary to the court's determination and order would be to act without lawful authority. This includes the hospital which would have been acting in breach of the court's order if they had permitted Alfie to be removed from the hospital.
If insurance will not allow treatment and there’s no way to pay and you can’t leave the country, you’re finished.
Side note: private health insurance, private healthcare facilities, and paying out of your own pocket are all possible in countries with socialized healthcare.