Back when grandma and the kids had to decide to sell the farm or keep grampa alive, extreme life-suspending efforts after "the appointed time to die" was a rare exception.
You've hit the nail on the head, Nebullis. This is still true in most of the world -- if you have the money, you receive the care; if you don't, well, you die. In America, as long as someone else (the insurance company, government, or hospital) is picking up most, if not all, of the tab, and providing the care, there is no incentive to face "the appointed time to die." What I'm concerned about is that as a way of rising keeping costs down we will go from one extreme to another -- from keeping a corpse alive on a ventilator to encouraging physican-assisted suicide (which might easily degenerate into involuntary euthanasia, as it has in Holland).
Many of the people on this board don't want to face the reality that we are not an infinitely rich nation and cannot spend the entire Gross National Product on medical care. A nation, like a family, must set priorities and cannot afford everything it wants. In childish, liberal-like fashion, they would rather name call and avoid answering the question of setting priorities.
Since you didn't state that you were family farm raised- I have to ask- were ya?