I am reading a fascinating book by Robert H. Frank, The Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide: Common Sense Principles For Troubled Times.

Starting on page 95, he discusses a case where Baylor Hospital in Plano, Texas turned off the ventilator of a fully conscious, but terminally ill cancer patient. It took her 16 minutes to die of suffocation as observed by several of her family members who were helpless to do anything about it.

True to its word, Baylor disconnected her ventilator on December 12, invoking a law signed in 1999 by George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. The law relieved doctors of an obligation to provide life-sustaining treatment ten days after giving formal notice that such treatment was found to be medically inappropriate.

Here we have the idea of death panels with no need to even convene a panel. Talk about your efficiency.  This is a marvel of brilliant Republican thinking.  I don’t even care if it turns out at the time that the Texas legislature may have been dominated by Democrats.  In many cases a Texas Democrat would be considered to be a Republican in most other parts of the country.

It’s a good thing I put in that last proviso.  Follow this link to see where I got the following statistics:

In 1999 in the Texas state legislature there were 78 Democrats and 72 Republicans in the House.  There were 15 Democrats and 16 Republicans in the Senate.   The total was 93 Democrats and 88 Republicans.