(From 1998) What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide?

The New England Journal of Medicine ^ | July 16, 1998 | Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., and Margaret P. Battin, Ph.D

[CalifScreaming]

In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization. Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients....Many have linked the effort to reduce the high cost of death with the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. One commentator observed: "Managed care and managed death [through physician-assisted suicide] are less expensive than fee-for-service care and extended survival. Less expensive is better.

[CalifScreaming]

Obama health Czar is open to the idea of euthanasia as a means of cutting costs. Article 11 years ago Ezekiel Emanuel brother of Rahm Emanuel.

[Prospero]

You have to love the brazen attitude of these guys, all out of the closet and "empowered" and all that, you know, by Obama, who is so, you know, so smart, and all?

You know?

We all know that the final determination of the intrinsic value of an individual human life has to be based on it's quality. Never mind all the "God" stuff, that those holy rollers are always laying on us. Those people actually believe every human being is like, you know, a "coin" with the image of God stamped on it, and that the intrinsic value is beyond determination, infinite, sort of...you know?

/sarcasm.

[GeronL]

In Oregon a woman was denied treatment that was thousands per month by the state health system and offered suicide pills that cost $50.

Multiply that by 1.5 million or so seniors per year pushed to kicki the bucket a little earlier, we could be talking about a lot of money.

[GeronL]

If we could get the cancer survival rate from 90+% down to Englands level of 49% or so, we could potentially save enough to build an internal National Civilian Security Force as well funded as the regular army...

just saying.

[GoreNoMore]

This is a 17 minute video of a senator discussing the health care bill. VERY INFORMATIONAL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryd90y7eOA4

[GeronL]

Imagine the billions that could be toward gay arts funding in schools and ACORN getting ownership of massive new section-8 apartment complexes where they can skim off the toip like they do in some northeastern states while bullying residents into joining and paying dies to them.

Why we could afford to abort every baby in the country if we just let the geezers go a year early.

This is a master plan, I mean stroke /pun, all we have to do is open the House Un-American Activities Committee and throw some dissidents in prison.

Very doable.

[CalifScreaming]

OBAMA should have pick Dr. Jack Kevorkian (Dr. Death) as surgeon general.

[thecabal]

Gay Mengele strikes again.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Well, some 2/3 of our health care costs are spent in the last few months/the last year of the patient’s life.

So, to cut health care costs by 2/3 (some 1 trillion per year) you just need to kill everybody 1 year before they die.

[Berlin_Freeper]

“...effort to reduce the high cost of death...”

In the old days they would lay in their “deathbed” at home till they ceased to exist.

How much does that cost?

[Daisyjane69]

Did you track this down yourself? Because if it’s not already “out there” I think a FReeper who is a member of the AARP might just wanna post it over there, ON IT’S OWN THREAD!

;)

[USNBandit]

Did you read the whole article? The conclusion was that physician assisted suicide would only cut health costs by .07 percent.

One issue with that conclusion is that their model was the Netherlands. the article makes it sound like that is the choice of the patient. In Oregon the choice for the poor is being made by the state.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Wonder how many doctors cried foul over this one appearing in that august journal. It would be better suited to a horror novel.

[mkjessup]

(w/apologies to the late Johnny Cash)...

"That death train is a comin', it's comin' 'round the bend,
We knew it was a comin', but we didn't know when,
We'll be dyin' for 0bama, and for his big Health Plan,
Say goodbye to the seniors, be they woman or man...

The babies are aborted, useless eaters are X'd out,
0bama is cullin' the population, that's what it's all about,
We'll be dyin' for 0bama, and for his big Health Plan,
Say goodbye to the disabled, because they've all been banned,

The 0bamunists are laughin', the ACORN thugs are too,
When they swore in the Usurper, America was screwed,
We'll be dyin' for 0bama, and for his big Health Plan,
Say goodbye to America, 'Hello' 0bamaLand..."

[Daisyjane69]

You win the prize, IMO.

That is the operative notion...who decides. And as the Washington Post article explained yesterday, it’s not as innocent as it seems (in the bill as written):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[smokingfrog]

[BossLady]

Barry to Rahmbo - 'That's ok...uh...we'll just...uh.... tell the seniors and handicapped ....uh...they are going to 'The Island'...." ((wink wink))

[MeekMom]

This scares the hell out of me. This Muslim-in-chief-thug has to be stopped!!!

[gusopol3]

One commentator claimed that "some 70 to 90% of our health care dollar is spent on the last few months of life."17 Others have suggested that the costs of care for dying patients account for almost 30 percent of all health care expenditures.10 In fact, each year about 10 percent of expenditures for medical care involves patients who die.40 The less spent on patients who die, the smaller the cost savings from physician-assisted suicide.

Interesting, huh?

[Steely Tom]

What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide?

Probably about the same as the cost savings from legalizing the re-enslavement of America's largest racial minority.