By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD

In a shocking departure from traditional hospital policies, a hospital admission has become like reporting to prison. Prisoners in America’s jails have more visitation rights than do COVID patients in America’s hospitals.

One family member, a professional psychologist with a career focus treating victims of trauma, said that in many hospitals COVID patients are treated “little better than animals.”

Shocking recordings of Mayo Clinic-Scottsdale and Banner Health System hospital executives have been released by an attorney on the Legal Advisory Council of Truth for Health Foundation, an Arizona public charity. Executives were discussing coordinated efforts to restrict fluids and nutrition for hospitalized COVID patients and to suppress all visitations for COVID patients.

The COVID protocol that hospital physicians must follow, in lockstep across the U.S., appears to be the implementation of the 2009-2010 “Complete Lives System” developed by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel for rationing medical care for people older than 50.

Dr. “Zeke” Emanuel, who was the Senior White House Health Policy Advisor to President Obama and has been advising President Joe Biden about COVID-19, stated in his classic 2009 Lancet paper: “When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

“Attenuated” means rationed, restricted, or denied medical care that commonly leads to premature death.

In 2021, whistleblower doctors, nurses, attorneys, patient advocates, and journalists have exposed egregious hospital abuses, neglect of patients, denial of vital intravenous fluids and basic medicines to hospitalized COVID patients across the U.S.

The Complete Lives Protocol apparently derives from the 1990s UK National Health Service “Liverpool Pathway,” which in effect constituted euthanasia.

Now we see its malevolent manifestation in the “COVID Protocol.” Age-based rationing is happening every day on COVID units of our hospitals, since the overwhelming majority of COVID patients are older than 50, the age at which Emanuel claims that a life is “complete” and not worth the use of medical resources.

“Complete Lives System” and the “COVID Protocol” are pathways leading to suffering and premature death, mainly of older Americans. They achieve the government’s goal of reducing Medicare costs. At the same time, hospitals make untold extra millions with extra incentive payments for COVID patients during their tortured path to death, while they are chemically and physically restrained and isolated from families, pastors, priests, and rabbis.

The heartbreaking story of Veronica Wolski, a well-known Chicago Freedom advocate, was widely publicized. Once hospitalized in ironically named Resurrection Hospital, Veronica was given remdesivir, which she had repeatedly refused, denied proper basic medical care that could have been life-saving, and was not allowed access to her family, priest, or healthcare power of attorney. The hospital blocked Veronica leaving the hospital when she and her attorneys demanded release. Her healthcare power of attorney was removed by hospital security. Veronica died alone as a medical prisoner in a Catholic hospital denied even a priest at the end of her life.

Unconscionable hospital violations of human rights, including even violations of the Geneva Convention codes established following World War II to prevent abuses of prisoners, are occurring daily across the U.S.

• Patients are coerced to take rapidly approved drugs like Remdesivir, in spite of known risks of kidney and liver failure, and to be placed on ventilators, both of which bring in incentive payments and create huge profits for hospitals.
• Patients are denied adequate fluids and nutrition, as well as vitamins, inhaled and intravenous corticosteroids, antibiotics, antivirals, and adequate doses of “blood-thinners” (anticoagulants).
• Patients suffer inhumane isolation with use of chemical and physical restraints, in violation of existing guidelines for patient protection.
• Hospitals are using law enforcement to deny access to hospital grounds for family and advocates.

Patients and their advocates have been denied information on benefits of early treatments and denied access to such treatment. Autopsies have confirmed many patients died because of inadequate doses of standard anticoagulation, even after family members went to court to demand therapeutic doses to help save lives.

Doctors and nurses risk their careers, their licenses, livelihoods, and even their lives as they courageously speak out to inform their patients and the public with life-saving information. One ICU physician colleague posted this on social media recently

“Just finished a 10-night stretch in the ICU. Patient bashing and blatant meanness have taken on a whole new level within our healthcare colleagues. How can we NOT spiral downwards towards despair when this behavior is allowed and is being normalized?? …I feel I’ve been thrown into a Mean Girls sequel. Making fun of patients and families for not being V’d is the cool thing now. …I don’t mind taking care of COVID patients. But this hateful vibe that has permeated my world is what’s going to end my career if it doesn’t end.”

Welcome to the brave new world of government-directed medical care carried out by obedient, profit-focused hospital executives eager for the government handouts of incentive payments for following the “COVID Protocol.”

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Dr. Vliet has been a leader in patient centered, individualized medical care. Since 1986, she has practiced medicine independent of insurance contracts that interfere with patient-physician relationships and decision-making. Dr. Vliet focus is medical freedom and free market approaches to healthcare. Dr. Vliet is the founder of Vive Life Center and Hormone Health Strategies with medical practices in Tucson AZ and Dallas TX, specializing in preventive and climacteric medicine with an integrated approach to evaluation and treatment of women and men with complex medical and hormonal problems from puberty to late life.

Dr. Vliet is a 2014 Ellis Island Medal of Honor recipient for her national and international educational efforts in health, wellness, and endocrine aging in men and women, and is recognized in the US as a motivational speaker in health and wellness and a powerful patient advocate, proponent of free market approaches to lower healthcare costs. Dr. Vliet is the recipient of Voice of Women Award from Arizona Foundation for Women in recognition of her pioneering advocacy for the overlooked hormone connections in women’s health.

Dr. Vliet’s consumer health books include: It’s My Ovaries, Stupid; Screaming To Be Heard: Hormonal Connections Women Suspect– And Doctors STILL Ignore; Women, Weight and Hormones; The Savvy Woman’s Guide to PCOS, The Savvy Woman’s Guide to Great Strength, and Stamina.

Dr. Vliet is a past Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a member of the AAPS Editorial Writing Team on healthcare reform, and a member of International Menopause Society and the International Society for The Study of the Aging Male (ISSAM). She received her M.D. degree and internship in Internal Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and completed specialty training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She earned her B.S. and Master’s degrees from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

Dr. Vliet has appeared on FOX NEWS, Cavuto, Stuart Varney Show, Fox and Friends, Sean Hannity and many nationally syndicated radio shows across the country as well as presented hundreds of Healthcare Town Halls addressing the economic and medical impact of the 2010 healthcare law and free market reforms, as well as seminars and radio shows on healthcare reform, Men’s Health and Women’s Health.

Dr. Vliet speaks as an independent physician, not as an official spokesperson for any organization or political party. Dr. Vliet has no financial ties to any health care system or health insurance plan. Her allegiance and advocacy is to and for patients.