That first bit wouldn’t apply to the case in point, since we appear to be talking about the government paying for end-of-life care.
The second bit is a really bad idea. There’s no better way to guarantee months or years of litigation over an advance directive than for it to be sprung on the family at the last second. People should be open and honest with their family members about what they want for themselves.
Regarding the OP -
I see it as, at the most fundamental level, putting money ahead of life.
And IMHO, that is the ultimate slippery slope.
My mother wears a medic-alert bracelet reading “NO CPR 10 MIN”. In other words, if her heart stops for any reason, no on is to make any effort to restart it. If it stops, that’s it, she’s gone. She was nurse her whole life, often caring for people with substantially limited physical capabilities, and wants to never live in a state of anything less than 100% capability. In fact, I’ve been explicitly told that if I catch her moving at anything less than a brisk walk, I’m to strike off her head with a shovel.
A lot of the fear of receiving anything less than the full court press of medical care has to do with the fear of others making the decision for you. As Fear Itself asks, “should I have said that’s it?” Well, the correct answer is “what does your wife want?” The only wrong answer to that question is “I don’t know, we haven’t talked about it.”
There’s nothing cowardly about proactively deciding not to fight to the last drop of life, to accept that death is near, and to face the end of your life with dignity and repose. I find the opposite to be cowardly. Those who want every expensive heroic measure taken, to the point of absurdity, when quality of life is gone, and when all you’re fighting for is a few more painful hours in a hospital bed, is an abject failure to accept the inevitable and face it with some dignity.
Nonetheless, this is an intensely personal decision and even under government run health systems, it should be up to the person dying to make those choices. In the long run it’s not the most expensive part of the system.
Your father received what they call palliative care; treatments to improve his quality of life even though long term survival was possibly not affected. As the end draws near, hospice care–to relieve pain & deal with other distressing symptoms–is often the best option. This can be administered at home or in a hospice.
People really need to decide these matters in advance. And record them in Advance Directives. And discuss their wishes with whomever has Power of Attorney.
You pay into the medical system when you are young and do not need it. The insurance companies make a fortune off the fact you are young and healthy. Then when you get old ,you are just a big financial burden and should be quietly and cheaply put away. Perhaps veterinarians could offer the service.
Sounds good till you think about it a bit.
If you “declared war” on death, you could easily spend more keeping everybody alive for as long as possible than each and every person actually earns in a lifetime. So, how do we pay for all the other neccessities of life?
This may be a slight exaggeration, but I don’t think so.
When push comes to shove, you HAVE to ask how much are we willing (and able) to pay for what?
Reality sucks unfortunately.
Its only a problem if the paperwork is sloppy.
Perhaps the medical profession and hospitals could charge less.
I think a big problem comes in drawing a line, hence Advance Directives being important in this matter. I want to preface that I agree with you, but at the same time I see some amount of impracticality in:
How long do they have to live to not be resuscitated? Two months? Six months? A year?
What percent chance of them dying in that time frame do they need? 80% they won’t make it? 90?
You are fundamentally playing with people’s lives when you make these estimates, and some people will want to hold onto that 10% chance they have to live over a year, whereas some people will say end it if there’s “only” a 30% chance they’ll live over 2 years. I think despite the use of public money in some of these cases, you just have to delegate to the patient’s decision.
How much less?
That just shifts the line, but there is most certainly still one.
A lot less. We overpay for all our medical work, They could easily take the financial pain out of the end of life trauma.
Okay. Crank out the cites and the numbers and calculations.
You do realize many people that work in the medical field aren’t exactly rolling in money or just sitting around barely working all day don’t you?
Of course they are , if they are hospital workers, nurses or clerks. But that is also not who is responsible for the outrageous costs. Those who are in the right spot are swimming in dough. The important ones like insurance providers .
I’m a little unclear on what the OP was arguing with his coworkers. Were you proposing that anyone who is diagnosed as terminal should be cut off from receiving any more medical care, or were you proposing that anyone who is terminal and *chooses *to stop medical treatment should be allowed to die on their own terms? I can read the OP either way, and people in this thread seem to be commenting on both situations.
I don’t think that any terminal patient should be denied care - some patients can survive years after a ‘terminal’ diagnosis and there are lots of cases where palliative care, including things like chemotherapy and surgery, can improve quality of life. But I do think that patients who have chosen to end treatment should be given that right, and painkillers or whatever should be provided to them. And I don’t think that is a ‘coward’s death’, in fact I think it seems pretty brave. Besides which, the fact that your coworker thinks that people should die with a “clear and free mind preparing to meet God” seems bizarre to me - end-stage cancer patients are often pretty out of it even without drugs, are they not going to get to meet God?
Anyways, death and dying are subjects that are tricky to discuss at work. A coworker of mine recently left town to be with his mother when she died, and when another coworker told me that I said something like 'well, I hope she doesn’t suffer too much". My coworkers were horrified and accused me of “hoping she would die fast” and not caring enough to wish for her to get better instead.
Yup. Once again, blame the insurance providers, not the doctors or drug companies or device manufacturers. These are the guys swimming in dough. And a handful of insurance executives, sure.
It seems to me the very people who don’t believe in birth control because it is un -natural still want to keep a person suffering when they would die without extraordinary means don’t think of that as un-natural, or playing God!
I have a living will, and I want my wishes filled, should the time come when my being kept in a comatose state would be the case. I do not want to be plugged into artificial means.
A person’s wishes should be their choice.
Sadly, wishing doesn’t help.If wishes were horses all beggers would ride!
Maybe it wasn’t so much what you said but how you said it? I don’t disagree with what you are proposing, but it’s the sort of idea that, if it isn’t discussed with some sensitivity, can come across badly.
A lot of insurance execs make outrageous amounts of money.
But we have money driven medical care. We do not pay for results, but for procedures performed. Lots of doctors have part ownership in clinics and labs. Sometimes they own them. Then for some reason, they keep running tests that use that lab.
There is no downward pressure on hospital costs. They jack prices up at will. If you could name your own prices, would prices go down?
Doctors scream about Medicare because they can not jack the costs up as fast as they want to. Any downward pressure on profits is seen as invasive.
The device manufacturers have used congressmen and senators to maintain their ridiculous profit margins. Bills have been introduced to deal with them, but the lobbyists won out. They always do.
The whole medical system is corrupted and greedy. But the docs have had fabulous press since TV came around. We watch them on TV solving cases in an hour a couple times a week. people believe that is what doctors are like. But they run the gamut from incompetent and greedy to altruistic and talented. They are just people with all the flaws humans have. And they have too much power.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that doctors scream about Medicare (if and when they do) because Medicare sets the prices, and often they’re for less than the (procedure + rent + utilities + payroll + insurance)/number of procedures costs the doctor. So doctors end up *losing *money with each Medicare patient. And then the insurance companies say they won’t pay more than Medicare will, so they start losing money on insured patients. Which means the doctor has to jack up the price for the uninsured to make enough to keep their office open and three nurses employed.
It’s a whole f’ed up system of stupidity.