| Every prescription that is filled creates the need for the next one to be filled.
There is no reason to believe that health care expenditures could not someday consume every dollar earned in the economy. We could tax every working adult 100% of their earnings, throw it at keeping ever-sicker, ever-older adults alive another month or two... and still not really be done. That's not really going to happen, of course, because it's a ridiculous result. People won't work anymore if they get taxed 100%. We have to feed those people, and we have to feed children, so we can't really spend all the money on the world on health care. Which means that either some people are going to voluntarily choose to die, or there will be some really nasty picking-and-choosing going on to decide who will be forced to die. We already have some of that in deciding who will get scarce transplant organs, and who will stay on the list... perhaps to die. But we are someday going to have that issue with everyone, because there is not one of us who, toward the end, could not be given another year to live for 5, 10, 25 million dollars in various "procedures." Who will get those procedures? Who won't? Will the people who need them have the courage, and the selflessness necessary to get the Hell out of the way voluntarily, or will they insist on putting the onus for killing them on their children? It will come to that. We're almost there now. |
Yeah, there are some serious ethical dilemmas coming up in the next ten or twenty years. We're about at the point where we can keep just about anyone alive for another ten minutes if we spend enough money. The sicker they get, the more expensive it becomes to keep them alive... but we can do it. It just costs a lot of money.