The Texas Advance Directives Act
Apparently, Texas has death panels:
In recent years, the Texas Advance Directives Act has defined one very concrete approach to addressing these dilemmas. When families demand treatments that have an exceedingly low likelihood of success or that sustain life of such low quality that one might reasonably say it is of no benefit to the patient, Texas law allows physicians to refuse to provide such treatments. Under the Texas legislation, demands by families for treatments that appear to meet these criteria are adjudicated by a hospital-based committee, and if the committee agrees with the clinicians, and if other providers cannot be located who are willing to provide such care, then treatment may be withdrawn without the permission of the patient’s surrogate.
Details on the law here. Without passing comment on the policy, this is further evidence that we are having a much more serious conversation over end-of-life care in the states than we are at the national level.
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