Ethics of Long-Term and Assisted-Living Facilities

Assisted Living
Name
Institution Affiliation
Date
Assisted Living
In this scenario, I shall answer as a community member. The major issue here is that the child cannot live without aid under any circumstances owing to the fact that he was born with no brain function. In addition to this, the mother is not able to meet the costs of her child’s medical care in terms of assisted living because she does not have medical insurance that can cover the costs. The question is whether it would be wise to take the child off life support because the child is not ever going to live at a good quality of life.
There are two ways this problem could be solved each coming with its own set of problems. The first plausible solution would be to take the child off the life support machine and just let him pass away. He was not born without brain function and cannot be construed to have a conscious experience of life. He does not understand all that is going on around him and, in addition, the mother cannot afford to pay for the life support. The ethical issues that emerge here are as explained in this sentence, “[healthcare] Providers should strive not to allow economic considerations to influence their care unduly either by failing to offer a full range of options or by providing care that is below usual standards.” (Shuman & Bebeau 1994).
The second option would be to let the child live and grant the mother the insurance by taking money from the community. The issue here is whether the economic constraints of the long-term special care, that the patient requires, satisfy the requirements of ethics in this case (McCullough 2018).

The best decision among the two options, and the decision which I would support, is for the hospital to eliminate the life support for the child. The costs of the special care that the child requires do not satisfy the ethical requirements because the child will never be able to have a quality of life that can be dignified as human.
References
McCullough, B. (2018). Long-Term Care Ethics – Ethical issues in long-term care decision-making. Medicine Jrank. Sourced from http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/1063/Long-Term-Care-Ethics.html
Shuman, S. K., & Bebeau, M. J. (1994). Ethical and legal issues in special patient care. Dental clinics of North America, 38(3), 553-576.