The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: SSG Snuggle Bunny on August 17, 2012, 12:39:40 PM
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dkf (28,614 posts)
Health care spending on end-of-life treatment is irrational
Mercury News reporter Lisa Krieger's compelling, poignant tale Sunday of her father's final 10 days of life and the extraordinary hospital costs they entailed should be required reading for all. For doctors. For hospital administrators. For health care policy makers, both elected and professional. And, although it is painful, for every one of us with aging parents or friends -- or with a creeping sense of our own inescapable mortality.
Krieger puts it best: "My father's story -- the final days of a frail, 88-year-old with advancing dementia at the end of a long and rewarding life -- poses a modern dilemma: Just because it's possible to prolong a life, should we?"
Krieger chronicled her anguish over whether to continue measures to keep him alive despite his rapidly deteriorating health. He received excellent care, but the size of the bill was staggering: $323,658 for 10 days at Stanford Hospital. This for a man who had embraced a frugal life and had left advance directives discouraging extraordinary measures to keep him alive.
The federal government estimates that 70 percent of health-care expenditures are spent on the elderly, 80 percent of that in the last month of life -- and often for aggressive, life-sustaining care that is futile. Think what America could do if it invested that $140 billion a year in other arenas. By comparison, the 2012 budget request for the National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, is $31 billion.
The United States spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care costs compared with most Western nations, yet it leaves millions of people with no health insurance at all. The bubble of end-of-life care is one reason.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19905093
sinkingfeeling (25,124 posts)
2. But you can't have ACA pay for any end-of-life planning, remember?
The Magistrate (78,549 posts)
4. There Is Something To That, Ma'am
Unfortunately, often people involved are not quite in a rational state. Patients or relatives clutch at straws and refuse to abandon hope, doctors' identity and feelings of self-worth are often bound up with a resolve to somehow cheat death, at least this time, and every so often, the long-shot comes through so no one can say there is no chance at all of success.
Unfortunately, also, it would not be remotely feasible, as a political matter, to do something by law or regulation about this. We do not have, shall we say, a culture of acceptance in matters where the natural course contrasts with personal desire or will. Substantial portions of the populace rebel at the thought of euthanasia, whether in active form, or by passive measures such as a directive for palliative care only till the end comes. We have already seen, in the wholly bogus 'death panel' cries against the Affordable Care Act, how powerful would be the opposition roused by any attempt to mandate palliative care directives on fiscal grounds.
Zalatix (6,791 posts)
5. This point will be exploited in the future as a great argument for euthanasia.
Not by the OP, but by politicians who study these issues.
The extraordinary cost that comes with medical care in one's elderly years will be used to sell semi-voluntary (as in doctor-suggested) euthanasia.
Yeah yeah, I know, flame throwers and brickbats.
In 30 years I'll be saying I told you so.
dmallind (9,850 posts)
8. Why would that be bad? nt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021150219
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Not like those of us on the Right didn't see this coming, huh? :whatever:
I am continually amazed at the cognitive dissonance displayed daily by liberals and leftists: Conservatives want to kill off the poor and put leftists into concentration camps but don't you dare let anyone spend a dime on gramma when she gets sick.
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Not like those of us on the Right didn't see this coming, huh? :whatever:
I am continually amazed at the cognitive dissonance displayed daily by liberals and leftists: Conservatives want to kill off the poor and put leftists into concentration camps but don't you dare let anyone spend a dime on gramma when she gets sick.
The only cognitive dissonance is from conservatives who ascribe innocence to proven liars.
The liberals weren't in denial...
...they were furious she let the secret out.
It's easier to get Jews into the crowded room if the sign above the door reads "Shower" instead of "Gas Chamber."
Who would eat Soylent Green if it were properly labeled?
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The only cognitive dissonance is from conservatives who ascribe innocence to proven liars.
The liberals weren't in denial...
...they were furious she let the secret out.
It's easier to get Jews into the crowded room if the sign above the door reads "Shower" instead of "Gas Chamber."
Who would eat Soylent Green if it were properly labeled?
I use to tell my kids that the difference between the right and the left was only that they differ on how to "get there". That they both agreed on the outcome but just didn't agree on methods. This was before I started reading the lefts own words.
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Stupider than showing granny being thrown over the cliff by your political opponents to scare the elderly into voting for you...?
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I use to tell my kids that the difference between the right and the left was only that they differ on how to "get there". That they both agreed on the outcome but just didn't agree on methods. This was before I started reading the lefts own words.
I had a conservative teacher challenge me to read the Communist Manifesto, feminists, abortionists and gay rights activists. He said no commentary was needed, just read them in their own words.
That was over 20 years ago and I never looked back.
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I had a conservative teacher challenge me to read the Communist Manifesto, feminists, abortionists and gay rights activists. He said no commentary was needed, just read them in their own words.
That was over 20 years ago and I never looked back.
I saw the bread lines and empty stores in the USSR on television growing up. When I heard the Democratic Party repeating Soviet propaganda, I ran like hell.
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I really don't understand all this squabbling. I lost both of my elderly parent's last year. Three days before my father died they asked me (because I had his power of attorney and was his medical surrogate) what measures should be taking to keep him alive. I discussed this with my family and we decided respirator was OK but if his heart couldn't beat on it's own then let him go.
Two and a half months later, my mother who was very ill (and missing my father) told her doctor that she was tired and didn't want to keep hanging on. The called hospice who took her off all her medicines and she passed away 4 days later. She went peacefully.
Neither accumulated a lot of extraneous bills (although it wouldn't have mattered to me if they did) and I was able to be with both of them at the moment of their passing. That has been one of the greatest comforts that any one could imagine and I thank God that He gave me the chance to spend their last moments with them.
I love and miss them but they are together now.
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I really don't understand all this squabbling...
They squabble because end-of-life care for others cuts in to their welfare and food stamp payments.
And it denies them power over others.
I refer you to the old Twilight Zone episode, "The Obselete Man."
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I love and miss them but they are together now.
I haven't lost a parent, yet. I do find myself sometimes wishing I could ask something of Grandpa or increasingly Grandma. Then again, there are times when, especially my grandpa, seems to be standing right beside me.
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I haven't lost a parent, yet. I do find myself sometimes wishing I could ask something of Grandpa or increasingly Grandma. Then again, there are times when, especially my grandpa, seems to be standing right beside me.
He is.