"Tell me about it."
Posted on 02/11/2008 11:00:05 AM PST by qam1
Initiatives to encourage people to live healthier, longer lives are just creating a different set of problems.
A medical friend once told me that if everybody in the UK were to stop smoking, the NHS would collapse. I thought she was offering that old chestnut about smokers and drinkers handing over billions to the state in tax, but it was more subtle argument than that. Her point was that it's much cheaper to treat a 50-year-old who's taking 18 months to die of lung cancer than it is to treat a 90-year-old who's spent the last 20 years slowly fading away from a cocktail of osteoporosis, angina, pneumonia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and non-specific decrepitude.
Of course, it's not really that simple. Recent research in the Netherlands has spawned headlines such as "Healthy people place biggest burden on state" - although this ignores the overall social costs and lost opportunities of poor health. Nevertheless, government injunctions to stop smoking, eat fruit and veg and rediscover the use of one's legs may buy an individual another 40 years of life - but how much of that life will really be productive, healthy and happy?
Any public health initiative, whether on smoking, drinking, exercise, healthy eating or whatever, is lauded by its sponsors as having the potential to "save lives". It's a deliciously redemptionist image - I can just picture Alan Johnson as a hellfire preacher - but it's nonsense of course. They're not saving lives, they're just postponing deaths. And all those people who don't die young from heart disease or cirrhosis or emphysema will get something different but probably equally unpleasant a bit later. It's just a case of moving the beds around on the terminal ward.
And should we be encouraging people to live so long anyway?
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(Excerpt) Read more at commentisfree.guardian.co.uk ...
FYI -
I guess you were right.
L
"Tell me about it."
Glass half full thing.
Speaking as an old geezer who watched his old mother and mother in law die within the recent past, the medical profession’s view tends to be - you are old, you are going to die. I realize that all generalities are false including this one, but medical doctors tend to let nature take its course when one gets old. Just hope that you know who you are when you shuffle off this mortal coil.
Restating, I think that they will just give you a basic (low) level of care.
passsst. the alternative ? Soylent Green !
Now let me get this straight; is the commenter saying we should NOT take good care of the bodies the Good Lord gave us?
My guess is that socialized medicine will lead to a scenario where, after the age of say, seventy, the proles will not be entitled to any state healthcare at all.
Kinda like Joe Haldeman’s dystopian sci-fi novel; “The Forever War”.
Note the psychological impact of socialized health care. People are now contemplating their lives solely in terms of how best to serve the state. Shall I be healthy or die young, which best serves the state? Talk about warped.
It's really that simple.
Damn man, bad news never ceases.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Of course, it would be interesting to see how eternal life in one dimension or another comes into anyone who focuses only on extending their lives. After all, if no real contributions to mankind are listed in the obit, why would extended life be the glory of humanity
I thought for a minute this was a Hillary thread.
And that is precisely why Hillary wants government-run health care.
Carolyn
Why should the government be involved in this sort of thing anyway. Isn't the right blend of exercise, tofu, and creme brulee a pretty personal decision?
My guess is that socialized medicine will lead to a scenario where, after the age of say, seventy, the proles will not be entitled to any state healthcare at all.
Kinda like Joe Haldeman’s dystopian sci-fi novel; “The Forever War”.
Aren’t doctors in the UK saying that already?
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