09-19-2009, 04:52 AM
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Just me.
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Join Date: May 2002
Location: West central Illinois
Posts: 590,002
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by jseal
All health care systems ration their services. Some do it by price, others do it by time. Another way of saying this is that in some health care systems, you must pay more to receive some services, while in others, you must wait longer. We are all going to die. The demand for interventions that might postpone that inevitability outstrips the supply. Of course no sane politician will admit this. It is easier to promise that all will receive whatever is medically necessary. Has Mr. Connelly (or most people for that matter) stopped to ask what that means? Should doctors seek to save the largest number of lives, or the largest number of years of life? Even here in the U.S., resources are limited. No one doubts that spending a thousand dollars to save the life of a child is a good idea. However, what about five hundred thousand dollars to prolong a terminally ill patient’s painful life by a month?
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I don't think it's the government's job to decide when a person of whatever age or physical condition will die or deprive them of services they arranged to to have available. How soon will it not just be the unwanted babies; the old or infirmed; the mentally handicapped or physically disadvantaged? It's true that today I, together with my physician, discuss and decide on treatments affecting my health and sometimes I have to decline services because the costs and benefits don't appear to be worth it. That's my decision based on my situation. But to have a government policy making that decision is wrong.
I also do not believe it should ever be a question of prolonging the lives of greater numbers or that of the terminally ill. We're ALL physically terminally ill from the moment of conception. Bodies wear out at some point and we're gone and that point varies by person. If a person has the resources or the access to resources and they choose to invest large somes to prolong their live for however little time ... they should have that option.
It's my feeling that life is God's gift to the world and that we should be far more appreciative of that gift than our country (and the world in general) seems to be today. What we don't need is another buracracy draining the weath and production of this country. Our debt levels are high enough.
To fix the problems of the uninsured is one thing. But to toss out what's working doesn't make sense and only contributes to higher costs.
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