Health I am afraid all I know about nursing homes and geriatry, has been learned the hard way. The worst part for me is when someone makes decisions according to “advice” and one can at most suggest they should get a second opinion, and then one has to be silent and watch impotently. Incidentally, advice could be to withhold reasonable treatment or to push unreasonable treatment, it can be either way, unfortunately the variable is the amount the insurers will pay the institution for the treatment, and the overhead compared to actual costs.
There is no question everyone involved is guilty, the govt, the insurance companies, the hospital management, the committees who write down protocols of care. And there is no question the employee is much less guilty than any of those. But I can not agree with your conclusion that the employee is innocent. I know it is hard to give up a secure job. But when one is earning parnassa in a way they feel is not permissible, or in any event, they are not proud of, people have a choice. I found myself in a difficult situation (no human life involved), a perfectly legal, but very questionable to me, mode of operation – I took the confrontational path. I was not fired nor demoted and it did not go to court – obviously when the contract expired, that was it. It was very helpful and strengthening for me to know that, about two years earlier, a young man (a nonjew) had quit over the issue, his girlfriend immediately dumped him (they were about to marry), no one from his birth family was supportive. He had no money, no home, highly qualified with no way of finding another job, he had to make a living with small jobs here and there. It was much harder for him and yet he did not think twice. Time has passed and people willing to compromise have been found, but you know what? Some of them quit. Some others became scapegoats. Of course! Do you think President Obama or the manager of the clinic would support the employee? Do you think they will take responsibility for the protocol, Obama for having legislated in a way that calls for such protocols, the manager for having actually signed it? Of course not! How they react depends on how much it goes virally, how incensed public opinion is or pretends to be, and whether headlines and primetime broadcasts of the recording die down quickly enough for them to remain silent without damage to their public image. If it’s called for, they will go on TV with high screams, they will blame her and her only, and might even call for exemplary punishment.