Death Panel ghouls in Canada lost in the Hassan Rasouli case....

but this case should make one wonder how many other times the Death Panels has won, not only in Ontario but all over Canada.  If  Hassan Rasouli, the man on life support, did not have such determined family members, determined to keep him alive in spite of the Death Panel ruling to have his life support taken off, the man would have been six feet underground today because the Ontario Death Panel would have had their way.  Kudos to the women of the Rasouli family.  This was a landmark case but few are really taking notice in Canada itself because this kind of health care has become the norm here ... not so in the USA.  They have taken note and many now realize that Sarah Palin proves herself  to be right again and again much to the dismay of dimwits.

In my opinion,  when it comes to the lives of Canadians in Canada,  saving money on care should never be the objective. If the government can throw away billions of dollars on people and projects in countries outside Canada,  the government  can bloody well spend money on Canadians in Canada.  Period!!

Adam Goldenberg writing at Slate:
Last week Canada’s Supreme Court  ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.
In other words: Canada has death panels.
I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country, it was imaginary.
Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act has been on the books for nearly two decades. Like similar laws in many Canadian provinces—and American states—it sets out the process for making treatment decisions when a patient........

From Macleans:
The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed an appeal that would have permitted doctors to end life support for a severely brain-damaged man without the consent of his family or a substitute decision maker.
The ruling effectively upholds existing legislation in Ontario and several other provinces that says disputes over end-of-life care decisions must go to an independent tribunal for resolution — and are not the sole purview of either doctors or of patient’s families.
In a split decision on what the top court called a “tragic, yet increasingly common conflict,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the majority that, under Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act, treatment cannot be confined to something that doctors consider to be of medical benefit to the patient.
“If death is considered harmful or a manifestation of ill health, then life support serves a preventive purpose so long as it is effective in preventing death,” the court dryly observed.
The case involves 61-year-old Hassan Rasouli, who has been kept alive on a ventilator and feeding tube since brain surgery in 2010 went wrong.
Doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital have determined there is no therapeutic hope of recovery and that keeping Rasouli on life support will result in a series of progressively worse medical complications as his body deteriorates.

However Rasouli’s wife, Parichehr Salasel, refused consent to end life support, citing the couple’s Shia Muslim religion and a belief that her brain-damaged husband’s movements indicate some level of minimal consciousness.
Salasel screamed in approval when the decision came through Friday, saying she was “happy for all humans,” not just for her husband, who she said shows clear signs of consciousness.
Physicians involved in the case had argued that consent under Ontario’s 1996 consent act was not required, because withdrawal of life support does not provide any medical benefit to the patient. For the same reason, they felt the decision was not subject to the independent tribunal process set up under the Ontario law.
Two lower Ontario courts disagreed and the Supreme Court, in a 5-2 ruling, upheld those lower court rulings.....

Jessica Barrett, Postmedia at NationalPost:
....The Supreme Court of Canada   has ruled that doctors cannot unilaterally choose to end life support services for Hassan Rasouli, an Ontario man who has been comatose since 2010.
In a 5-2 decision, justices for Canada’s highest court ruled doctors must first obtain consent from the man’s family, or, failing that, apply for permission from Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board, a quasi-judicial body that addresses matters of consent under Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act.
The court stressed, however, that its ruling applied only to cases in Ontario, and did not address the broader ethical question of who has the final say — doctors or family — in end-of-life care for incapacitated people. In effect, it said that Ontario has a board set up for determining such matters, and that Rasouli’s case should have been brought before it.........