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snousleIt seems kind of obvious to me what the flap about medical insurance reform is really about: using fear and hysteria to channel as much money as possible into the medical-industrial complex.
Terri Schiavo was a living (?) moneypot. When she died, the money stopped flowing. So of course there were lots of people who wanted to keep her body alive! It is the logical goal of the health care industry to have as many people as possible involuntarily committed to situations where they rack up gigantic medical bills and have no say in the matter.
The way to ensure that this money keeps flowing is to cast sane, sensible people - who pull the plug when appropriate - as murderers, and to cast ethics panels that help determine these boundaries as Nazis. By doing so, the industry gets their hands into every pocket that's got money in it.
Of course, no individual that works in health care sees themselves as a blackmailer. It is a systemic problem, which is neatly masked by the superficially helpful actions of every actor.
There will always be limits to appropriate care. People will always die earlier than they would have if they had unlimited funds to spend on treatment. Life-extending treatment has to be withheld at some point, and the principles for when it should be withheld will never be easy to swallow. The alternative is to spend, conservatively, more than one-third of your entire life earnings on medicine (the current rate is approximately one-sixth), and enjoy only marginal quality-of-life gains for doing so. The United States is headed rapidly in that direction.
I saw a tee shirt a while back, a Harley-logoed "biker" tee rather than a political one, but I think it had the right message: "EVERYONE DIES - GET OVER IT".
Not a popular sentiment in America. But it's the right one.
Terri Schiavo was a living (?) moneypot. When she died, the money stopped flowing. So of course there were lots of people who wanted to keep her body alive! It is the logical goal of the health care industry to have as many people as possible involuntarily committed to situations where they rack up gigantic medical bills and have no say in the matter.
The way to ensure that this money keeps flowing is to cast sane, sensible people - who pull the plug when appropriate - as murderers, and to cast ethics panels that help determine these boundaries as Nazis. By doing so, the industry gets their hands into every pocket that's got money in it.
Of course, no individual that works in health care sees themselves as a blackmailer. It is a systemic problem, which is neatly masked by the superficially helpful actions of every actor.
There will always be limits to appropriate care. People will always die earlier than they would have if they had unlimited funds to spend on treatment. Life-extending treatment has to be withheld at some point, and the principles for when it should be withheld will never be easy to swallow. The alternative is to spend, conservatively, more than one-third of your entire life earnings on medicine (the current rate is approximately one-sixth), and enjoy only marginal quality-of-life gains for doing so. The United States is headed rapidly in that direction.
I saw a tee shirt a while back, a Harley-logoed "biker" tee rather than a political one, but I think it had the right message: "EVERYONE DIES - GET OVER IT".
Not a popular sentiment in America. But it's the right one.
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Date: 2009-12-09 06:10 pm (UTC)I've been pondering an "advance directive" but what I want seems "out of the box." There are some dysfunctions I think I could learn to live with, like being wheelchair bound - but if something happens to me that causes any significant mental impairment, I don't ever want to wake up again. I would want them to keep me sedated, out of pain, but otherwise provide absolutely no "supportive" care - not even food or water - just let it go.
I don't believe in ghosts or an afterlife - but if someone let me linger in a Terri Schiavo-like state and it turned out there WAS an afterlife, I'd come back and haunt the HELL out of whoever did something so obscene to me.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 06:23 pm (UTC)Even if you have to change an advance care directive so much that it's no longer legally binding, it's still worth it. If it came to a court battle, any wishes you expressed in advance will carry weight.
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Date: 2009-12-09 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 04:08 am (UTC)- as evidenced by Steve Jobs' liver transplant in Nashville, TN of all places. The liver goes to the highest bidder. They used to do that on eBay, until they caught on.
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Date: 2009-12-10 04:40 am (UTC)The military industrial complex certainly has shown what could, and likely has happened, to health care.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 06:47 am (UTC)And who would the patient be after the brain transplant ?
How much of the personality is systemic, how much is in the brain, not the heart and pulmonary system ?