George Bush's Real Life Death Panel

"Death Panels" are often considered to be absurdly hypothetical, but let's not forget who brought us the real life versions: George Bush and the Texas Republican Party, acting, of course, on behalf of the health care establishment. The link is to the column of Steven E. Landsburg in Slate. Of course it wasn't quite a panel of the sort the WSJ imagines, since medicine was hardly the point.

Tirhas Habtegiris, a 27-year-old terminal cancer patient at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas, was removed from her ventilator last month because she couldn't pay her medical bills. The hospital gave Ms. Habtegiris' family 10 days' notice, and then, with the bills still unpaid, withdrew her life support on the 11th day. It took Ms. Habtegiris about 15 minutes to die.

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