CA - Parents Of Toddler Declared Brain-Dead Convinced He’s Still Alive

New Posts

JeannaT said:
I'm at a bit of a loss here. To me, parents refusing the process that their child is dead, when before their very eyes the child is moving in response to being tickled, is a good thing. Parents who will quickly side with doctors that a situation is hopeless don't have what it takes to be the best advocate for their children!

And I'm not sure I'd equate advocating for further services for a child a doctor has stated is dead equates to theft assault. ??
Click to expand...

Hmmmm..... I wonder what the total costs were for Israel's month-long-plus stay in the hospital after dying?

Insurance & Medicaid won't pay for it; they don't cover treatment of dead people.

The parent most assuredly don't have the money to pay for it.

I wonder who ends up paying for it? If wonder if that's a voluntary decision?
 
I think up to a certain point, at the time the hospital decides to discharge him, medicaid or insurance will pay.

God knows, there are old adults and extremely sick cancer patients begging to die who aren't allowed to by law.

So keeping this one little boy, who the parents believe to be alive, seems a drop in the bucket of cost compared to people who want desperately to die.
 
JeannaT said:
I think up to a certain point, at the time the hospital decides to discharge him, medicaid or insurance will pay.

God knows, there are old adults and extremely sick cancer patients begging to die who aren't allowed to by law.

So keeping this one little boy, who the parents believe to be alive, seems a drop in the bucket of cost compared to people who want desperately to die.
Click to expand...

He is legally dead. As far as I can tell, neither medicaid nor insurance are going to pay for medical care considering patient is legally dead.
 
JeannaT said:
To me, parents refusing the process that their child is dead, when before their very eyes the child is moving in response to being tickled, is a good thing.
Click to expand...

No, it isn't. It's simply delusional when doctors have repeatedly explained to them that those movements are purely reflexive and NOT indicative of any prospects at all of recovery.

Parents who will quickly side with doctors that a situation is hopeless don't have what it takes to be the best advocate for their children!
Click to expand...

I disagree. I would imagine that at least one family in the US faces this exact or a very similar situation every day but manages to understand what the doctors are telling them, and asks for a couple of days grace so grandma can get to the hospital to say goodbye before the machines are switched off. Are you really saying such parents cannot be "the best advocate for their children"?

Let's not forget that Israel's condition is in very great part down to his parents repeatedly and willfully neglecting his healthcare needs when he was alive. Maybe if they had taken better care of him he wouldn't now be dead (though with his clearly very complex health problems his death was not likely to be far away in any event).
 
So first of all, I feel for this family, I really do. I hope someone soon will speak the truth to them in a way that they can process it so little Israel can rest in peace and they can go on with the very difficult grieving process and help their other children deal with what has happened.

Second of all, in doing more research on Jahi's situation and comparing it to this, I wonder if there is a racial component. Please, let me explain.

I attended racial equity training three weeks ago (I highly recommend this for everyone, btw). One of the things we discussed is the health care disparities between whites and people of color. See link below for reference.

So I'm wondering if it's not that these families don't understand brain death, but that they don't trust the doctors who are telling them that's what it is. We still have much work to do in this country.

http://archive.ahrq.gov/research/findings/nhqrdr/nhqrdr10/minority.html


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Doghairrules said:
Second of all, in doing more research on Jahi's situation and comparing it to this, I wonder if there is a racial component.
Click to expand...

Yes, the first two cases which went high profile both involved black families, but in post #175 of this thread K_Z gave a link to another case involving a white family in VA whose toddler choked on popcorn and who are trying to prevent doctors from carrying out brain death tests.

There's probably a decent piece of sociological research to be done on this phenomenon of families who refuse to accept brain death, but I would guess poor education, low socio-economic status and religion (in some cases conveniently found) come into it somewhere.
 
JeannaT said:
I think up to a certain point, at the time the hospital decides to discharge him, medicaid or insurance will pay.

God knows, there are old adults and extremely sick cancer patients begging to die who aren't allowed to by law.

So keeping this one little boy, who the parents believe to be alive, seems a drop in the bucket of cost compared to people who want desperately to die.
Click to expand...

jjenny said:
He is legally dead. As far as I can tell, neither medicaid nor insurance are going to pay for medical care considering patient is legally dead.
Click to expand...

Jenny is absolutely correct. The cost of ICU hospitalization and total life support is astronomical. Insurance companies closely monitor the progress of patients in this situation and absolutely will start to deny coverage for unnecessary or experimental services. If there is no hope of recovery, the insurance company might continue minimal care for 2 or 3 days to give the family a chance to saw goodby. They would not cover unnecessary care for weeks, transfer a deceased patient to another facility, or pay for air ambulance transport. This would be true of public coverage (Medicaid, SCHIP, etc), private insurance, or government run healthcare in another country. If Israel is truely in Cuba, the Cuban socialized healthcare system is not paying for his care. It may be that he is being treated under some kind of grant or charity.
 
annahanna said:
Jenny is absolutely correct. The cost of ICU hospitalization and total life support is astronomical. Insurance companies closely monitor the progress of patients in this situation and absolutely will start to deny coverage for unnecessary or experimental services. If there is no hope of recovery, the insurance company might continue minimal care for 2 or 3 days to give the family a chance to saw goodby. They would not cover unnecessary care for weeks, transfer a deceased patient to another facility, or pay for air ambulance transport. This would be true of public coverage (Medicaid, SCHIP, etc), private insurance, or government run healthcare in another country. If Israel is truely in Cuba, the Cuban socialized healthcare system is not paying for his care. It may be that he is being treated under some kind of grant or charity.
Click to expand...

Often, there are caps on insurance payments. For example, the insurance company standard says a typical inpatient stay for XYZ is $12,500 over the course of 4 days. At that point, the utilization review team of the hospital has to begin communicating with the insurance company daily, to justify why insurance should pay for another day. If the insurance denies the payment, that means the hospital is now on their own dime treating this patient. Which leads to many people being discharged too soon, or loss of hospital profits.

This is only a very basic understanding I have of how insurance companies work; it's much more complex than this overall, but I'm guessing after the day he was determined to be brain dead the insurance company stopped paying. The hospital may or may not be able to bill the family, but what's the realistic possibility they can pay? Very few people could afford hospital bills that large.
 
Relatively new (9 days ago) post from the mom on a fundraising site. Will summarize the information, since WS prefers we not link to donation sites.

States the 2 surgeries to place breathing and feeding tubes have been done in the new country. Getting "nutrition." Says he has "finally" had an EEG which shows "brain waves", and that she believes he is alive. Says he has been treated for pneumonia, ulcers, and had a transfusion (not unexpected given his history of status asthmaticus and the ECMO course of treatment), that the previous hospital "failed to notify them about the complications". (KZ note-- I suspect that is a preview of a future lawsuit. Maybe I'm jaded, but I think they will eventually sue all three of the U.S. hospitals that provided care to Israel.)

She also writes that she believes he is taking breaths over the ventilator and they will be working to wean him off the ventilator over the next few weeks. Makes a plea for more donations, care is expensive, etc. This particular fundraiser has brought in a little over $23,000 in a month, which isn't much at all in light of the bills they are experiencing. (And certainly not much in donations compared to other cases like this that have made national news.)

The post also says they need funds for another "special medical flight" soon. So, where ever they have gone, they apparently need to, or want to, move somewhere else very soon. That's very interesting, IMO.
 
sonjay said:
Hmmmm..... I wonder what the total costs were for Israel's month-long-plus stay in the hospital after dying?

Insurance & Medicaid won't pay for it; they don't cover treatment of dead people.

The parent most assuredly don't have the money to pay for it.

I wonder who ends up paying for it? If wonder if that's a voluntary decision?
Click to expand...

The hospital will "absorb" his costs for care after being pronounced dead. (There are many, many aspects of care that cannot be billed for that hospitals provide and absorb the costs.) There is no state or federal entity, or insurance company, to bill for care rendered after a death pronouncement.

The costs after he was pronounced dead were probably around $100,000. Average PICU cost is about $3000/ day, just for the basics (not exceptional care, like ECMO). After he was pronounced dead, they would not have done any excessive (or even routine lab work-- each would have to be ordered separately). And likely they did no further diagnostic studies. Basic ICU care: monitoring, IV fluids, ventilator care, nursing care, and whatever meds he was on prior to being pronounced dead.

Costs for PICU care:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10548186
 
The problem with the private money is that people are not being given the truth about the situation. Israel is not alive, his eyes do not react to light, he does not respond to his mother's voice, he isn't breathing over the respirator and he certainly will not be returning to the country on a ventilator. It is all lies.
We don't join together in prayer to ask God to heal a child that has experienced cardiac death (even though we know he could), no, that would be creepy and cruel. So why should we do that when a child experiences brain death? It is just as final.
And what happens when all of those people who were sending up prayers and cash donations to make this extraordinary ( though futile) effort possible lose interest? Israel Stinson's parents are about to find out. They are stuck in a foreign country with their brain dead child and they don't have a snowballs chance in hell of bringing him back to their home country.
No one considers how devasting this effort to keep brain dead children on somatic support is for the families that do it. Nailah Winkfield is miserable in New Jersey and she has lost everything, even her relationship with two of her surviving children who were left behind in California. The Sinsons left behind Israel's little sister and Nate's older son from a previous encounter with a different woman. None of these parents have worked a day since their child was declared dead.
Nothing good can come of this, these parents must accept the death of their child just like everyone else who has lost a child.
 
Same article, different news source:

“On Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the Vacaville mother of 2-year-old Israel Stinson won a temporary restraining order against Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, blocking the hospital from removing her son’s ventilator, according to her attorney.

“It’s a reprieve,” said attorney Alexandra Snyder, adding that the hospital also is required to allow an independent doctor to conduct a medical evaluation of Israel, who suffered severe brain damage as a result of cardiac arrest in April at UC Davis Medical Center.

“We’ve asked for this for a long time,” said Snyder. “I’m hoping it’ll confirm that he does have brain activity.””​


Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article96597567.html#storylink=cpy

The attorney, Alexandra Snyder seems to be very very pro-life even if you're dead.

Alexandra is also an adjunct professor at Trinity Law School in Orange County, Calif., where she teaches a course on the Right to Life.

I wonder why they didn't try this out in Orange County.
 
i.b.nora said:
Same article, different news source:

“On Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the Vacaville mother of 2-year-old Israel Stinson won a temporary restraining order against Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, blocking the hospital from removing her son’s ventilator, according to her attorney.

“It’s a reprieve,” said attorney Alexandra Snyder, adding that the hospital also is required to allow an independent doctor to conduct a medical evaluation of Israel, who suffered severe brain damage as a result of cardiac arrest in April at UC Davis Medical Center.

“We’ve asked for this for a long time,” said Snyder. “I’m hoping it’ll confirm that he does have brain activity.””​


Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article96597567.html#storylink=cpy

The attorney, Alexandra Snyder seems to be very very pro-life even if you're dead.

Alexandra is also an adjunct professor at Trinity Law School in Orange County, Calif., where she teaches a course on the Right to Life.

I wonder why they didn't try this out in Orange County.
Click to expand...

I still don't understand how his body got back into the country and admitted to a hospital. While I feel horrible for the parents, they need to accept that his brain is not just damaged - it's dead. This is not healthy for anyone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
i.b.nora said:
...“On Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the Vacaville mother of 2-year-old Israel Stinson won a temporary restraining order against, blocking the hospital from removing her son’s ventilator, according to her attorney.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article96597567.html#storylink=cpy

The attorney, Alexandra Snyder ....is also an adjunct professor at Trinity Law School in Orange County, Calif., where she teaches a course on the Right to Life.I wonder why they didn't try this out in Orange County.
Click to expand...

^ sbm In some cases, a plaintiff & atty may lawfully 'forum-shop' to boost (their perceived) chances of favorable outcome. I doubt if they had 'option' to file in OC.

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles is in Los Angeles County, ditto med personnel 'caring for' (?) Israel, ditto Israel himself. Israel's mother seeks temp restraining order/ injunction from judge forcing CHLA & med personnel to take certain actions (allow independent dr to conduct med evaluation, etc.) or to refrain from certain actions (not remove vent) re Israel. Original jurisdiction, the power to hear this case initially, is in Los Angeles County, where all ^ are located. Orange County location of plaintiff's atty's office is not a factor here imo.
JM2cts, could be wrong.

Anyone have a link to petition/complaint itself? Thx in adv.
 
From our friends at wiki w some bolding below, by me.

"...non-profit hospital that cares for more than 107,000 infants, children and young adults each year,[SUP][1][/SUP] with physician expertise in over 100 pediatric specialties and subspecialties....
  • More than 62,000 children are treated each year in the Emergency Department
  • Children's is designated as a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center by the Los Angeles County EMS Agency
  • Operator of one of the largest dedicated neonatal/pediatric transport program in the nation, annually triaging more than 3,000 patients using a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, chartered Lear jet and other means of transportation.
  • Over 11,000 children admitted annually, with almost 50-percent of those admissions children under the age of five
  • Triage for more than 287,000 visits a year to the 29 outpatient clinics and laboratories and nearly 2,800 visits at community sites
  • Performs more than 13,900 pediatric surgeries a year, including more than 850 cardiothoracic surgeries (heart, lung and heart-lung transplants), 550 cardio- catheterizations; 650 neurosurgeries; and 1,570 orthopaedic surgeries
  • Maintains one of the most active and productive Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) centers in the United States, providing long-term cardiac and/or pulmonary bypass support for infants and children who are in life-threatening cardiac or cardio-respiratory failure in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit.
  • Provides innovative therapies for high-risk infants transferred from other hospitals throughout Southern California and beyond
  • Maintenance of the only dedicated, separately staffed pediatric Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit for children on the west coast
  • Provides 35 pediatric critical care beds, more than at any other hospital in the Western United States.

The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is among the largest and most productive pediatric research centers in the western United States. The institution conducts laboratory, clinical, translational and community research...With $74.8 million in total funding and $32.7 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, more than 400 faculty collaborate to combat cancer, heart disease, brain disorders, autism, obesity and diabetes, among other devastating pediatric conditions.
"The best pediatricians in the country are trained at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; training programs include 341 medical students, 168 student shadowers, 90 full-time residents, three chief residents and 116 fellows."
^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Hospital_Los_Angeles
Also www.chla.org.

^^^^^^ Absolutely astounding to me. 100 ped specialties & subspec's?!? All those training programs & research?!? Wow. Just wow. ^^^^^^^


Not to offend or disparage the other med facilities & med professionals who treated Israel. Just did not take time to read about them.
 
al66pine said:
^ sbm In some cases, a plaintiff & atty may lawfully 'forum-shop' to boost (their perceived) chances of favorable outcome. I doubt if they had 'option' to file in OC.

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles is in Los Angeles County, ditto med personnel 'caring for' (?) Israel, ditto Israel himself. Israel's mother seeks temp restraining order/ injunction from judge forcing CHLA & med personnel to take certain actions (allow independent dr to conduct med evaluation, etc.) or to refrain from certain actions (not remove vent) re Israel. Original jurisdiction, the power to hear this case initially, is in Los Angeles County, where all ^ are located. Orange County location of plaintiff's atty's office is not a factor here imo.
JM2cts, could be wrong.

Anyone have a link to petition/complaint itself? Thx in adv.
Click to expand...

I had a longer answer for you, then got interrupted by a phone call and I guess I lost it.

In a nutshell, my point is that the Los Angeles Children's Hospital was chosen for some very specific reason, for what I believe is an underhanded legal ploy. And, since the attorney seems to operate out of Orange County as well as Sacramento County, why was the hospital in Los Angeles County targeted to receive a dead body? Why not target a hospital in ultra-conservative Orange County? I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say.

This attorney is associated most recently with some group called Life Legal Defense Foundation. I think its odd that they have taken on this case.
 
i.b.nora said:
I had a longer answer for you, then got interrupted by a phone call and I guess I lost it.
In a nutshell, my point is that the Los Angeles Children's Hospital was chosen for some very specific reason, for what I believe is an underhanded legal ploy. And, since the attorney seems to operate out of Orange County as well as Sacramento County, why was the hospital in Los Angeles County targeted to receive a dead body? Why not target a hospital in ultra-conservative Orange County? I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say.
This attorney is associated most recently with some group called Life Legal Defense Foundation. I think its odd that they have taken on this case.
Click to expand...

Sorry to have been a bit dense. Thx for this post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Staff online

Members online

... and 212 more.
Total: 2,585 (members: 213, guests: 2,372)

Online statistics

Members online
213
Guests online
2,372
Total visitors
2,585
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
592,210
Messages
17,965,230
Members
228,720
Latest member
CourtandSims4
Back
Top