“Well, the man is making sense on this point. An enormous % of US medical expenditure is on patients who are dead within 3 months.”
Do you want some government paper pusher figuring out how much longer you’ll have. If I happened to be incredibly wealthy, and wanted to keep doing procedures until the day I died, I should have that right. Teddy Kennedy does...but the rest of us shouldn’t?
It reads to me like you agree with BO. He’s saying you can pay for it out of pocket if you like, but it won’t be sustainable for the public system to pay for it. Makes sense to me.
Teddy Boy Kennedy is fighting to put off His Judgement Day as long as humanly possible because He Fears That Final Judgement Will Be Eternity in HELL!
The fact of the matter is that unless you're paying for the hip replacement surgery, for example, out of your own pocket, some paper pusher -- whether he works for Medicare or some insurance company -- is reviewing actuarial tables, cost-effectiveness studies, clinical trial results, etc. That's exactly what they do and always have done.
Once a person reaches a certain age or once an illness is considered to be terminal, certain tests and procedures are considered pointless. For example, why screen a man for prostate cancer when he's got inoperable lung cancer and 6 months to live?
The really tough decisions concern quality of life issues. If someone is suffering from an incurable disease yet is expected to live for another 2 or 3 years, can hip replacement surgery be considered healthcare dollars well spent? Without the surgery, the patient will eventually be confined to a wheelchair; with the surgery, the patient is likely to enjoy 18 months of mobility before dying.
Those are the really tough decisions.