I cared for my mother with congestive heart failure and my husband with Alzheimers, both of who wanted to die at home. I also spent a fair amount of time helping my father who died shortly after a stroke in the years before he died. Having watched 3 people die up close and personal, I think I could be pretty good at predicting if someone was going to die within 2 or 3 years with adequate data from family.
For longer term predictions one has to consider if there is the possibility of significant life style changes by the person identified. I am reminded of a joke my husband told.
A man goes to the Dr. and says, “Doc, I feel tired all the time, can’t sleep, no appetite, stomach hurts, feel like hexx.”
The doctor examines him and says, “Well sir, you are in bad shape and you need to give up smoking, drinking, and running with wild, wild women.”
“But Doc,” the man says, “I don’t do any of those things.”
“Well,” says the doctor, “There you have it, you’re a sinking ship and you have no ballast to throw overboard.”
Whenever predictions are made that we don’t like, we always need to look at our lives to see if we have any ballast that we can throw overboard. In the case of my mother and husband, not much could be done. In my father’s case, however, he did not stop smoking until he was 87, and he had a bad temper and high blood pressure. He blew his stroke while standing in a grocery line on a Friday afternoon buying groceries for a 90 mile drive to a rental property with bad tenants who owed rent where he was going to spend the night. I’ll bet he was in a seething temper. Failure to learn anger management and also to cut back his activities appropriately killed him at age 90.
I disagree. I look at my doctor as I do my auto mechanic. If I have harmed my body or my car and there is a fix, then I shall pay for it to be fixed. My poor maintenance has nothing to do with the decision. And nobody else need concern himself with it.
OK, so the fascists want to ration care base on years of quality of life expected. Appently, an older person’s year of life is less equal than a younger person. The elderly are being viewed more and more like the pre-born- disposable. What if the ante is raised by the rationing of health care resources by tax revenue generated per person. That would deny care to society’s ‘takers’. Here, the fascists would face a dilemma between their desire to deny care in general, and their desire to aid their welfare constiuency.
The Dims are all about one thing-power. Benefits will be doled out to their supporters and their opponents will be punished. All they want is total power. Instead of the rule of law, we will have the law of the jungle, sheer tribalism.