It’s one thing to let a patient decide to forgo heroic care. But it’s certainly another to assign a dollar value to human life. What a way to gently “suggest” euthanasia. We are living in dangerous times here in the U.S. When people start judging quality of other’s lives, look out.
Terri Schiavo is a perfect example.
may be of interest to you ping
This was publish in the Pittsburgh Trib, owned by Margaret Sanger sympathizer Richard Scaife. Notice the pro-death overtones?
this is why it’s important to have a living will and a power of attorney. I see these dilemmas all the time. The patient can no longer speak or even think for themselves and the family at the bedside is torn apart by conflicting views on death and dieing. I see a lot of: “did you see that? She moved her eye lids when I asked her.....”. I think that unless someone has been through this at least once, they don’t really know what they’re talking about. Even as an RN, I didn’t fully grasp it all until I had to make my mother a Do Not Resuscitate patient thanks to metastatic cancer. There comes a time when it’s over. Typically, it’s very hard for family members to let go when that time comes. It is, IMHO, one of the hardest most gut wrenching tasks that a person will ever encounter in life-letting go of loved ones. You just don’t know until you have been through it.
What a coincidence, the dessicated Leslie Stahl just discussed this very topic on "60 Minutes on CNBC."
Which is made all the more creepy because I thought 60 Minutes was on CBS.
Families did that for nearly all of the first 200 years of the USA.
Yes, it's a new moral challenge only faced by the last 3-4 generations with the advent of Medicare. Before Medicare families either had insurance...or money...or the family member died a "natural" death.
Heart Attack, stroke and cancer were usually fatal in the near term. Now it's possible to extend life decades beyond the initial incidence. And yes, there is a dollar cost to it and if the cost were born by families more natural human behaviors would prevail.
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.