Today in Fulton County court the courtroom was packed with dialysis patients and advocates who were scheduled to have their dialysis turned off last week but for whom a temporary restraining order had kept the Grady clinic in Atlanta GA open until today, I guess. Lawyers for Grady Hospital argued that the patients don’t have a right to healthcare (that one made me kind of wonder) and that Grady (whose mission is to care for the sick and indigent poor) didn’t have any obligation to them. They provided an affidavit saying that 88 patients had been provided with followup. Now I am not a math major, but originally there were 95 patients and there were at least 25 in the court and 95 minus 25 equals…

Oh, and their “followup” was to send at least two to Mexico which doesn’t have long term dialysis, and therefore they will die there.

The lawyer for the patients argued that closing the clinic was sentencing them to death, therefore depriving them of the right to live. I mean, doesn’t the US Constitution give us the right to live? If we have someone on death row for killing someone we spend millions to give them due process, but if they are a Grady dialysis patient we just turn off the plug. People go nuts over pulling the plug on brain dead Terry Schiavo but we have no compunction turning off dialysis.

One of the patients has a green card and is short of one year to qualify for Medicaid. But, I guess, she must die. One was sent to Florida because they said he could get dialysis there but couldn’t get it, had a stroke and came back to Atlanta.

Fulton Courthouse, Sept 23, 2009

There is something seriously messed up with a country that allows people to die like this. The Judge is supposed to give a ruling today or tomorrow.

Join the FB cause “Protest Grady Hospital’s Death Sentence for Dialysis Patients” here.