If further treatment isn't going to improve the situation, a time comes where you have to consider quality of life in the remaining days or wasting scarce resources on a fools errand.
For about fifteen years I was a direct pay health care customer. No government largess, no employer involvement, just me paying my provider for coverage.
That ended this year because the premiums got too high. Customers like me were where providers went to make up for discounts handed out employer 'group health plans' and Medicare reimbursements.
I was asked for nearly $600 per month in 2011. A relative's family of five pays just $17 under a public employee group health plan. Identical coverage, provider and clinic. If they were direct pay customers their premiums would be thousands per month.
While I've not needed a doctor in over 5 years, that family of five includes a range of chronic health problems. Someone has to subsidize their care and the care of thousands, even millions of others.
I realized this year just how foolish I was to be personally and directly responsible for my own health care. I was a sucker, robbed blind because I wasn't gaming the system.
More people need to feel the actual cost of their healthcare decisions and stop treating the system like an endless resource. They are thieves driving up the cost for everyone and pricing too many out of even basic medical care. That's inhumane and selfish. Adults need to face the certainty that is their own mortality.
You act as if every human being should get whatever medical treatment exists, costs be damned, sky's the limit. It's madness.
Um, did you flunk basic reading comprehension, because at no point I “act as if every human being should get whatever medical treatment exists, costs be damned, sky’s the limit”. I posted this thread to illustrate the insidious way the media is slowly convincing us that we have a duty to die when someone (insurance, hospitals, doctors, etc) deem that it’s our time.
You are the one who seems bitter. And judging by your comment about gaming the system, it seems that you would be the one who is part of the problem.
What’s with all the pro-death trolls around here? I thought JR made it pretty clear that FR is a PRO-LIFE forum.