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 ...
When the Social Security system was set up people would retire one year and meet their maker shortly afterwards, my mother in law is living with us having retired from the educational system 35 years ago!
I am not saying that I wish she meet her maker soon, rather that with such an expansion of our lifetime through all the improvements in medical care, nutrition and other factors, they have yet to revamp the system to take those factors into consideration.
Very scary article! If we get socialized medicine, advances in medicine will not matter. The social healthcare system will not allow us to live beyond a certain age.
Yes, it seems to me (stating the obvious) we should all decide what “risks” we want to take and deal with the results. The gov’t should butt out.
Liberal Fascists are afraid of dying and meeting their Maker. They think embryonic stem cell research is going to keep them alive forever. And we’re the evil fools?
Even worse, advances in medical care will no longer exist. There will be no reason for government to aggressively seek medical advances like medical device entrepenuers do now to make a profit in a niche in the market currently vacant.
And the conservatives would be 1st on the list. ;-)
“I am not saying that I wish she meet her maker soon,”
Yeah, riiiigghhht!
:D
Carolyn
I get it - the new liberal ideology is that euthanasia or suicide is the patriotic thing to do once you can no longer contribute to the welfare state (to keep some young, able-bodied bum in the style to which he has become accustomed, not to mention non-profits in clover). The fascist/socialist slogan used to be - if you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Today, it’s - off to the knackers with these geezers.
If the retirement age were moved to 75, Social Security and Medicare expenses (and taxes) would be much, much lower.
People who believe in Jesus as their Lord and savior are less concerned about the lengthening of their life.
People that think this life is all there is are quite a bit more interested in life prolongation.
This life, relative to the “hereafter” is sort of like your life in the womb, relative to the “real life”.
Looking at it that way, why on earth would you want to prolong it, once your children are grown and on their own? I personally look forward with great anticipation of the “hereafter”.
Forever War was great. Forever Peace sucked. The “heros” of the story ended up with a Nazilike utopian control.
>>If the retirement age were moved to 75, Social Security and Medicare expenses (and taxes) would be much, much lower.<<
And as a 54 year old male myself, I think that is EXACTLY what needs to happen.
When SS was originally set up, the average american’s lifespan was shorter than the age at which you were eligible for benefits.
As do I, RobRoy. I’ve said many times, that once you reach 65, it’s time to start living to the fullest, and dangerously.
Jump out of that airplane, if that’s what you want to do!
Or in some cases, walk down into that seedy part of town where the illegal ganstra’s live and see if they take a pot-shot at you. HAH! I’m OLD, I don’t care!!
:)
I never heard of Soylent Green and I thought it was a supplement similar to the one I mix with my liquid vitamins. I said to myself, this must be something very good if its an alternative to s sick old age. So I googled it only to find out it was a movie. How funny is that! Sort of embarrassed but not enough to share.
Depends. I wont have my acomplishments in my obit. I just want it to read “I had the disease first, I get to name it.”
unless you know what “green” is, ya gotta see the movie.
There’s almost certainly no such thing as eternal life. At least not yet. Maybe we’ll invent that at some point in my life.
unless you know what green is, ya gotta see the movie.
My mind was thinking vitamins as in “Super Green” the supliment I take. I realized that was not the deal at all. Is the movie worth seeing? I have really never heard of it.
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