The fact that the healthcare was paid for by the Government had absolutely nothing to do with that case. A healthcare decision had to be made for a patient that was not able to make the decision themselves. When the doctors thought that the decision that the parents were making on behalf of the child was against the best interests of the patient they asked the courts to make a judgement of what should be done. The same thing can happen in countries with private healthcare and the same thing would have happened in the UK if they were in a private hospital.
>> A healthcare decision had to be made for a patient that was not able to make the decision themselves
Yes - it was made for the patient against the patient's legal guardians - his own mother and father. The government-run system overruled the patient's legal guardians.
This is precisely the issue at hand: a loss of freedom resulting from a healthcare system ultimately ruled by the government itself. The government has final say over healthcare decisions.
Again, the fact that the court made a decision for the patient has nothing to do with how the healthcare system of the country is funded. Courts and the legal system make decisions about children's lives against the wishes of parents all the time. Courts remove children from parents that they deem unfit. Courts decide that one parent or the other should have sole custody of the child against the wish of the other and many more examples.
Quite frankly I'm much more scared of a system where a parent has complete and absolute control over a child no matter what than one where a court can step in and overrule a decision of a parent. The doctors and courts owe their duty of care to the patient not to the parents.
>> No, the medical professionals, i.e. doctors do.
The UK doctors punted, agreed. But Italian doctors believed different treatments were warranted. The Italian government gave the boy citizenship.
In a private healthcare system, the parents would be free to pursue that. But in the state-run system of the UK, there was no such freedom. Alfie Evans died last Monday.
> But Italian doctors believed different treatments were warranted
Again no.
"The Italian hospital had acknowledged it could not find a cure, but had proposed maintaining Alfie’s life for about two weeks while doctors tried to investigate his condition."
There are no treatments - even that seems to be agreed.
> In a private healthcare system, the parents would be free to pursue that
If they could afford to write a blank cheque for open ended life support. Any insurance would defer to the consensus of medical opinion and cease treatment. They would have ceased cover long before the 2 year trail of court cases and appeals all the way up to rejection from the European Court of Human Rights (not part of the EU or UK govt).
I was indeed misinformed. Reading several news articles, not one mention that all that was left of his brain was water and spinal fluid. I only see that in the court transcripts, and that assessment was done from brain scans over several months.
Given this new evidence, I change my opinion on this: the state-run healthcare did offer the best advice.
(The question of state-run medical systems restricting freedom still applies here, even though the freedom would simply have been different end-of-life care.)
So, you might not know this but the doctors were not allowed to carry out their plan without a court order. The hospital needed to get the agreement of the court in order to turn off life support.
Contrast this with the US, where the hospital can announce the plan, and the parents have to sue to stop it happening.
That feels substantially worse.
Especially because in the UK the parents will have legal aid available to pay for their legal representation (Alfie's parents went through seven firms of solicitors) and because the child will have their own independent legal representation.
