I know a couple of women who chose to die rather than live with disability, pain, and medical costs.
But yeah, this is suspicious. In the cases I know, they didn’t take anyone else with them. One tried to get her grandchildren to kill her, and they refused, because they didn’t want to be legally guilty of murder. She ultimately managed to do it herself. Another just refused treatment and died “of natural causes”. This sounds like the HUSBAND despaired and decided to kill both of them, not like SHE wanted to die.
Or, if I may stereotype people by their age (mid 70s), she wanted to but was timid about it and/or wasn’t comfortable enough with a firearm, whereas he was able to man up and do what they both decided needed doing. I know plenty of older couples, hell middle aged couples even, where that’s the dynamic for day to day stuff. I’ve also known murderous men, and they wouldn’t wait until they are well into their 70s to shoot their women and then themselves.
Clearly, I know dookie about their precise situation but the story as presented, without assuming the worst about anyone, makes perfect sense to me and comports to what I know about people that age. Sure: could have been a guy having his fill after 50 years of a woman apparently intent on spending their last dime. But I’d be absolutely stunned if family comes forward and says it was anything other than Dad’s most chivalric deed for his wife to date, and that it most likely happened after months of her begging him to top her.
Fallacy of the excluded middle. Why can’t it be that he felt he was doing the right thing and being compassionate, but didn’t necessarily get her agreement? That would still be wrong. It would still be first-degree murder, in fact.
I work in medicare supplements and health plans among other things. This story went around like wildfire in my industry. It is unfortunate, but pretty well agreed upon that this was an avoidable situation had they actual talked with a competent insurance agent. Medicare is actually designed pretty well to make these things very avoidable if people actually seek help. Unfortunately its a complicated system and hard to navigate alone.
And yet on pharmacychecker.com, Xeljanz is $13 a pill total in Canada (so about $800/month total) because in Canada they don’t let drug companies charge whatever they want.
Why not? OK, the big R&D houses get patents on the new-and-improved insulin and continue to charge big bucks for it. But since the patent is expired on the old stuff, why aren’t generic manufacturers cranking out that old stuff and selling it for a fraction of the cost?
IANAD, but there is a discussion of why generic insulin isn’t widely available here.
Also, there is a “regulatory dead zone” where if you submit an application and it isn’t approved before next March 23, 2020, it will be automatically rejected. And the pharma companies can’t use any currently approved forms of insulin to show that the new generic form is safe and effective until after that.
It’s complicated, and an example of how regulations don’t always do what is intended, even when those intentions are good. And also not necessarily “big pharma is evil price-gougers cackling insanely while their customers die while they wring a few more dollars out of sick old people”.
That is an understatement. On a different aspect of how you can get fucked by the U.S. healthcare system, I posted what happened to me a couple of years ago, see here:
I have the best insurance available to me (an ACA-compliant plan). But for many weeks I thought maybe I was on the hook for about $200,000 for emergency surgery out of state. My insurance company deliberately misled me, and I ultimately had to do my own legal research. I’m lucky that it turns out the law is on my side in New Mexico, whereas in many states I would have had no clear legal protection. And I had to figure out all of this on my own while convalescing from major surgery - there’s no help navigating the arcane financial aspects of the US healthcare system, even if you can afford to pay a lawyer. I’m privileged to be well educated, English is my first language, I have financial resources and I’m assertive. But even for me this was a extremely stressful nightmare over an amount of money that could lead someone to bankruptcy and even suicide. Imagine how things are for an elderly person, a busy working single parent, someone who doesn’t speak fluent English?
Of course, there are all kinds of problems with the for-profit healthcare industry, which should be addressed.
But I believe SOME sort of rationing is necessary. I did not see in the story what the medical conditions/expenses were. Mid-70s isn’t ancient, but it isn’t young either. Some cost/benefit analysis of what expense for how many quality years is appropriate. If you are old enough and sick enough, IMO you ought to be provided palliative care - and options for assisted suicide.
Maybe there could be some sort of “Logan’s Run” option. You get premium healthcare for X amount of time and then, blink, lights out. They could even automate it with an implant which was programmed to automatically release a fatal sedative while you were sleeping at the appropriate time.
Personally, I would love something like that should I get a debilitating condition like dementia. It would be great while I still had some of my capabilities to say “I want one more year to slide away and then that’s it for me.”
But I think it’s pretty offensive to even have a conversation about the need for “rationing” until the clusterfuck that is the U.S. healthcare system is fundamentally reformed in line with civilized modern human values and sensible economic principles. Until we at least try to take a fundamentally sensible approach to providing universal healthcare in an efficient manner, I think it’s immoral to be talking about trying to save a few dollars here and there by letting some elderly people die.
That’s not on. If your doctor concludes that your advanced brain cancer is untreatable, that’s one thing, but not as a “cost/benefit analysis”, except in sci-fi dystopias and incisive satire.
Fine. People may disagree. (And get offended.) Just stating my opinion.
I’m in favor of GREATLY expanded public healthcare, and DRASTIC revisions of the for-profit healthcare industry. But I do not support UNLIMITED free health care for EVERY person.
I imagine we might be able to identify some ridiculous outlier of an example that most of us would agree on. An extremely aged person with very poor quality of life, whose life could be extended some short period through some very expensive procedure. Should that procedure be publicly subsidized? If you agree not, then we simply need to see where YOU would draw the line.
By this misleading negative characterization, every healthcare system anywhere that makes any choice about where best to devote resources is a “death panel”. The only way to avoid “death panels” is to have no healthcare at all, then everyone gets exactly equal resources.
And the current U.S. healthcare system is the worst “death panel” of them all, in allocating a vast proportion of available resources to inefficiency and corporate profits instead of actual healthcare.