Sen. Warner calls for discussion of end-of-life treatment

The Virginian-Pilot ^ | March 6, 2009 | Dale Eisman

[NoPrisoners]

Is it worth it to extend a dying person’s life by a week at the expense of treating a hundred people with otherwise easily-curable health problems?

First, I would like to ask where are the "hundred people with otherwise easily-curable health problems"?

Secondly, what evidence do you have that our medical resources are so limited? If this was Canada, and you were waiting 6 months for heart bypass surgery, I would agree that there was a shortage - but I see no evidence of this in the United States. Neither do I see soup-kitchen like lines of critically ill youngsters waiting for care.

I'm sorry for the procedures performed on your grandfather that have left you bitter and disillusioned, but your family had the right to refuse such treatment - especially if he had left advanced directives for his care. Those rights could have been exercised.

[NoPrisoners]

It had nothing to do with money and everything to do with our family’s decision about quality of life.

Exactly so...and your father was afforded the dignity he deserved by being cared for at home surrounded by family. These are decisions that MUST be left to the individual and the family. Any intrusion by the government strips us of our rights and allows someone else to decide our worth, and is an extremely slippery slope.

[jimt]

And was it worth it to spend $100,000 on that rather than converting that $100,000 into 1000 free trips to the doctor for random people?

Newbie, you suffer from the illusion that you have the right to decide how to spend OUR money.

You're wrong. Post on DU where they'll appreciate it.

[tpanther]

Steffie Woolhandler, a Harvard Medical School professor and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, argued that there’s no evidence the end-of-life planning Warner advocated would reduce health-care costs.

Everyone should plan for end-of-life care, she said, but the key to reducing costs is replacing the private insurance plans that pay for most U.S. health care with a government-run “single-payer” health system.

“There’s a tremendous amount of waste” associated with private insurance, Woolhandler said, with companies overcharging by about 13 percent nationally.

---

Proof positive that liberals, even, (or perhaps particularly), Harvard educated ones, do not have control of their faculties.

As a hospice nurse for going on 2 decades and a nurse for 25 years total and an Air Force medic prior to that, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to understand the most wasteful entity of all IS the government!

Medicare fraud alone in this country costs us about $33 billion a year!

And for the most part, the elderly already are covered by the gov. via medicare, and it’s the 80-90 year olds that comprise the bulk of our patient loads.

But if families were educated and proper end of life issues WERE addressed, they’d not be placed on feeding tubes, undergo needless surgery, and be kept alive for the sake of the physician or the family, prolonging their suffering against their will; and the time to accomplish this is not when they’re actively dying and they and their families are under duress, but before-hand.

And of course, we ALL benefit as a society, financially and otherwise!

Liberalism is the disease killing this country.

[Corin Stormhands]

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[wagglebee]

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[GWMcClintock]

Hey Warner! You go first! Try out the policy, and get back to us on how it goes!

[wagglebee]

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