8mm
Posted on 03/27/2008 4:39:54 PM PDT by chessplayer
A senior Church of Scotland minister has questioned the wisdom of spending large amounts of money keeping older people alive. The Reverend Maxwell Craig, 76, feels funding could be better spent helping the young stay out of trouble.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Incredible. The Reformation.....the gift that just keeps giving.
76 years OLD, you say?
He should off himself to set an example for the rest of us. ;)
“Spending” does NOT “keep youth out of trouble” - ask Paris Hilton’s parents.
PreacherMan arguably has been drinking too much of the sacra’mental’ wine.
LOL
I was gonna say, let’s start with HIM!
And why should we take care of the handicapped? /sarc
SOYLENT GREEN!!!
No, this is what I think. I am going to linger until there is no money left, then and only then my family can pull the plug.
Most people don't pay enough into the system to pay their own way.
I bet many progressives are in agreement with the idea that old people should be left to die because they are too expensive to take care of. But can you imagine the firestorm if he had said that AIDS treatment is too expensive just to prolong a terrible illness and the money can be better spent elsewhere?
So, what’s he using up air space for?
The Minister has a point ... but one that is only present and worth discussion in a socialized medicine or subsidized medicine system. If individuals have their own funds to spend on health care, then the system becomes self regulating.
As people get older, health care costs go up as the natural decay of time and bad habits wear the body down. When people run out of money to support their health, they will soon suffer a condition that will cause mortality to take it’s final toll.
What a creep.
Ironically, a strong family and extended family help. Many grandparents raise their grandchildren without any help from the parents. Example: Obama’s “racist” grandmother. I doubt he’d be successful without his grandmother taking care of him when he was young.
Ping....
Why don't you suggest that the parents of these 'young' spend some time helping their kids stay out of trouble and let the old folks live too. Sheesh, has it really come down to one or the other?
Heck....the elderly should quit taking care of the YOUNG....that’d show ‘em
You are correct. And as people start living longer and longer this is a problem we will have to address....it's uncomfortable but calling people names who even dare bring it up is ridiculous.
I'm just stating a fact when I say that the money that is spent just to keep bodies alive is astronomical. That is not a comment on whether or not that money should be spent..it's just a fact..a fact that people don't want to talk about.
And this notion that "we paid in.." Anyone who has taken care of an elderly person knows that one long hospital visit more than takes up what was put in..and that's the truth.
If we say we will do this ... whatever it costs, than we're going to have to decide as a nation what is going to have to go...because we just won't be able to afford it.
Watch, I give you 10 posts before someone calls me a Nazi.
Xer Ping
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.
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Depends on who we’re talking about.
“———including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for”
Poor baby——cry me a river. What a whining post.
Well, because we live for something bigger than ourselves that includes them, that's why. And that's why we care for the elderly as well. A life lived otherwise is grim, superficial, tawdry and futile. It disappoints me to see a clergyman ascribe to this arid moral calculus but it doesn't surprise me much.
When my granfather found out that he had throat cancer he refused chemotherapy. He said “I’m 84, wtf do I need with chemo?”
LOL...you beat me to it....
Remember...tuesday is Soylent Green day...
My mom did the same thing when blood tests showed her ovarian cancer was back when she was 81. She passed away within a year, but it wasn't from the cancer.
Get a grip, please brother, and put the Protestant bashing club back on your belt.
Poor put-upon Hildy. She manages to choose the side of death every time a life issue comes up, but darn it, nobody should criticize her!
You're not a Nazi. I'm still trying to come up with a name for your kind, something like "necrophiliac" only without the sexual connotation.
Euthanasia, here we come. Led by the church. Just great.
So, let me get this straight: Someone objects to out-of-control spending that they never authorized, never received any benefit from but will be expected to pay out the nose for, and that's whining?
OK, fair enough. Freepmail me your credit card numbers. I promise to be gentle.
Last month there was a letter to the editor in Discover magazine advocating “something like abortion for the elderly.” Of course, Discover is really a religious magazine these days...
WHY CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT THIS WITHOUT CALLING NAMES? All I want to know is how we are prepared to pay for all of this? As a conservative, I’d think you’d want to know as well.
It’s one thing to make sure the elderly are clothed, housed, nursed as needed, and fed. But it’s quite another to give million dollar life extending treatment on the taxpayer dime when the person is not going to live much longer anyway.
If it’s voluntary, that’s perfectly fine.
Maybe Europe should promote a baseline treatment that doesn’t include costly pharmaceuticals and hospital care to those whose poor decisions in their already long lives put them there in the first place.
The system would be self regulating if it was truly based on one's ability to pay out of pocket and not on insurance or access to entitlement programs.
NO SALE.
In America when the baby boomers start to retire and vote every benefit in the book to themselves, their children and grandchildren will for sure become fans of euthanasia.
Really. He should spend more time ministering to the youth to make them more responsible and less time making the elderly feel worthless.
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The young will be old someday. It’s doing them no favors.
Mr. Silverback...with all due respect...You are a zealous nut. I JUST WANT TO KNOW HOW WE’RE GOING TO PAY FOR ALL OF THIS. Not a crazy ass question...but then again..I’m not the crazy ass.
Insurance is a private contract where a person pays out of their pocket over time and the insurance provider takes the risk of a given group of people will produce more income than expenses. Even this becomes self-regulating as a person moves from one group into a higher expense group, the insurance company will then adjust the premiums.
First, thank you for the compliment. If a person like you sees a person like me as a zealous nut, that means I'm right on track. I mean, God forbid we should have medical reform while valuing life, right? Seriously, when have you ever been in a discussion related to end-of-life care issues on this site where you said the patient in question should live? Can you point me to a post where you proposed or endorsed a reform plan that would take the funding burden off taxpayers without witholding medical care?
Second, I reiterate: If what you cared about was funding, you would not have been opposed to using a $2 pill to help vegetative patients, and you would not be one of FR's foremost supporters of this guy...
Second, Michael Schiavo has been acting so weird he makes Hunter S. Thompson look like Joe Friday. If we believe his court testimony, the timeline goes like this: Some years prior to Terri’s collapse she told him that she would never want to “live on a machine” or be a burden. Yet in 1992, his lawyer told a jury Michael might need enough money to take care of her for another half-century. Michael proclaimed from the witness stand that he would become a nurse and take care of her “for the rest of [his] life.” By 1993, he had stopped rehabilitation (which was showing promising results), had put a “Do not resuscitate” order in her chart, tried to deny her antibiotic treatment for an infection, melted down her wedding ring and euthanized her cats. In other words, he ignored what she said about being a burden, then swore in court to take on the burden, but decided a few months later it was too much of a burden.
...not only because of his transparently evil bahavior but because all the money involved was private.
Hildy...with all due respect...if culture of death advocates were simply crazy instead of dangerous, it wouldn't be a real concern.
The question of "who will pay for non-productive members of society" has ALWAYS been an issue (civilized society takes care of its members), it is only within the last century that the culture of death has tried to change this, but I'm sure you already know this.
wagglebee...we’re not talking about anyhing else but how, as a society, we are going to pay for our ever increasing aging society. I don’t think that is an outrageous question. We have the technology to keep people alive far longer than social security and medicare was set up to cover. Am I right, or am I wrong? So again, my question becomes, how are we going to pay for all of this.
I answered respectfully, and all I ask is an honest and respectful debate.
But it's a serious distortion to assume that your only options are (A)gazillion-dollar high-tech futile care, or (B) the geriaticide bullet (or its equivalent.)
Whatever happened to "ordinary care"?
You have a right to refuse ALL expensive "extraordinary" care and you have a right to live to the end in decent simplicity --- clean, warm, sheltered, and fed --- which doesn't cost much; costs much less, I daresay, than the care and feeding of a golden retriever.
Even if, in my case, you add a couple beers to the daily geriatric regimen.
When a government, like the UK, decides that it is going to accept responsibility for healthcare AND they take more than half or people’s incomes to pay for it, then it is there problem to figure it out.
If government is out of the deal, costs drop dramatically. Take Terri Schiavo for instance, the ANNUAL healthcare costs for a person living at home with a feeding tube is approximately $31,000. This is a lot of money, but not so much that many families would be unable to afford it. The Schindlers were willing and able to do this, her death was never about who could afford to pay for her care.
But if the government isn’t involved in it, meaning some kind of public policy...and if it is a responsibility of the family, don’t you think you’ll see many more older people not getting the care they need because of the cost? I mean if it is a decision to be made by the family only. Honestly, $31,000 a year is alot of money to most people.
I want to be clear, I believe it should be a family decision, but with that comes some very touchy issues....any way you look at it, it’s going to be a mess. That we can agree on...correct?
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