"Tell me about it."
Posted on 02/11/2008 11:00:05 AM PST by qam1
Initiatives to encourage people to live healthier, longer lives are just creating a different set of problems.
A medical friend once told me that if everybody in the UK were to stop smoking, the NHS would collapse. I thought she was offering that old chestnut about smokers and drinkers handing over billions to the state in tax, but it was more subtle argument than that. Her point was that it's much cheaper to treat a 50-year-old who's taking 18 months to die of lung cancer than it is to treat a 90-year-old who's spent the last 20 years slowly fading away from a cocktail of osteoporosis, angina, pneumonia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and non-specific decrepitude.
Of course, it's not really that simple. Recent research in the Netherlands has spawned headlines such as "Healthy people place biggest burden on state" - although this ignores the overall social costs and lost opportunities of poor health. Nevertheless, government injunctions to stop smoking, eat fruit and veg and rediscover the use of one's legs may buy an individual another 40 years of life - but how much of that life will really be productive, healthy and happy?
Any public health initiative, whether on smoking, drinking, exercise, healthy eating or whatever, is lauded by its sponsors as having the potential to "save lives". It's a deliciously redemptionist image - I can just picture Alan Johnson as a hellfire preacher - but it's nonsense of course. They're not saving lives, they're just postponing deaths. And all those people who don't die young from heart disease or cirrhosis or emphysema will get something different but probably equally unpleasant a bit later. It's just a case of moving the beds around on the terminal ward.
And should we be encouraging people to live so long anyway?
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(Excerpt) Read more at commentisfree.guardian.co.uk ...
FYI -
I guess you were right.
L
"Tell me about it."
Glass half full thing.
Speaking as an old geezer who watched his old mother and mother in law die within the recent past, the medical profession’s view tends to be - you are old, you are going to die. I realize that all generalities are false including this one, but medical doctors tend to let nature take its course when one gets old. Just hope that you know who you are when you shuffle off this mortal coil.
Restating, I think that they will just give you a basic (low) level of care.
passsst. the alternative ? Soylent Green !
Now let me get this straight; is the commenter saying we should NOT take good care of the bodies the Good Lord gave us?
My guess is that socialized medicine will lead to a scenario where, after the age of say, seventy, the proles will not be entitled to any state healthcare at all.
Kinda like Joe Haldeman’s dystopian sci-fi novel; “The Forever War”.
Note the psychological impact of socialized health care. People are now contemplating their lives solely in terms of how best to serve the state. Shall I be healthy or die young, which best serves the state? Talk about warped.
It's really that simple.
Damn man, bad news never ceases.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Of course, it would be interesting to see how eternal life in one dimension or another comes into anyone who focuses only on extending their lives. After all, if no real contributions to mankind are listed in the obit, why would extended life be the glory of humanity
I thought for a minute this was a Hillary thread.
And that is precisely why Hillary wants government-run health care.
Carolyn
Why should the government be involved in this sort of thing anyway. Isn't the right blend of exercise, tofu, and creme brulee a pretty personal decision?
My guess is that socialized medicine will lead to a scenario where, after the age of say, seventy, the proles will not be entitled to any state healthcare at all.
Kinda like Joe Haldeman’s dystopian sci-fi novel; “The Forever War”.
Aren’t doctors in the UK saying that already?
When the Social Security system was set up people would retire one year and meet their maker shortly afterwards, my mother in law is living with us having retired from the educational system 35 years ago!
I am not saying that I wish she meet her maker soon, rather that with such an expansion of our lifetime through all the improvements in medical care, nutrition and other factors, they have yet to revamp the system to take those factors into consideration.
Very scary article! If we get socialized medicine, advances in medicine will not matter. The social healthcare system will not allow us to live beyond a certain age.
Yes, it seems to me (stating the obvious) we should all decide what “risks” we want to take and deal with the results. The gov’t should butt out.
Liberal Fascists are afraid of dying and meeting their Maker. They think embryonic stem cell research is going to keep them alive forever. And we’re the evil fools?
Even worse, advances in medical care will no longer exist. There will be no reason for government to aggressively seek medical advances like medical device entrepenuers do now to make a profit in a niche in the market currently vacant.
And the conservatives would be 1st on the list. ;-)
“I am not saying that I wish she meet her maker soon,”
Yeah, riiiigghhht!
:D
Carolyn
I get it - the new liberal ideology is that euthanasia or suicide is the patriotic thing to do once you can no longer contribute to the welfare state (to keep some young, able-bodied bum in the style to which he has become accustomed, not to mention non-profits in clover). The fascist/socialist slogan used to be - if you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Today, it’s - off to the knackers with these geezers.
If the retirement age were moved to 75, Social Security and Medicare expenses (and taxes) would be much, much lower.
People who believe in Jesus as their Lord and savior are less concerned about the lengthening of their life.
People that think this life is all there is are quite a bit more interested in life prolongation.
This life, relative to the “hereafter” is sort of like your life in the womb, relative to the “real life”.
Looking at it that way, why on earth would you want to prolong it, once your children are grown and on their own? I personally look forward with great anticipation of the “hereafter”.
Forever War was great. Forever Peace sucked. The “heros” of the story ended up with a Nazilike utopian control.
>>If the retirement age were moved to 75, Social Security and Medicare expenses (and taxes) would be much, much lower.<<
And as a 54 year old male myself, I think that is EXACTLY what needs to happen.
When SS was originally set up, the average american’s lifespan was shorter than the age at which you were eligible for benefits.
As do I, RobRoy. I’ve said many times, that once you reach 65, it’s time to start living to the fullest, and dangerously.
Jump out of that airplane, if that’s what you want to do!
Or in some cases, walk down into that seedy part of town where the illegal ganstra’s live and see if they take a pot-shot at you. HAH! I’m OLD, I don’t care!!
:)
I never heard of Soylent Green and I thought it was a supplement similar to the one I mix with my liquid vitamins. I said to myself, this must be something very good if its an alternative to s sick old age. So I googled it only to find out it was a movie. How funny is that! Sort of embarrassed but not enough to share.
Depends. I wont have my acomplishments in my obit. I just want it to read “I had the disease first, I get to name it.”
unless you know what “green” is, ya gotta see the movie.
There’s almost certainly no such thing as eternal life. At least not yet. Maybe we’ll invent that at some point in my life.
unless you know what “green” is, ya gotta see the movie.
My mind was thinking vitamins as in “Super Green” the supliment I take. I realized that was not the deal at all. Is the movie worth seeing? I have really never heard of it.
my personal translation of Paul’s words...
“To live is Jesus
and to die, well that’s just a whole lot more Jesus!”
=0)
In “Soylent Green” old people were to be euthanized when they reached a certain age.
I have to laugh :). Your discription of the movie sounded like my son’s when he went to a movie when he was young. He could repeat the movie almost word for word - who needed to go to the movies after that. I couldn’t believe he could do that now, it seems, so can you. :)
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