“Such measures account for more than one-fourth of Medicare payments and 10 to 12 percent of all health...”
Yeah, it’s not about compassion or caring for loved ones in their final hours, it’s about Government money. There is absolutely no doubt that when socialized medicine is foisted on us a doctor will come in to a dying person’s hospital room and tell the family, “well, you’ve used up more than your share, time to pull the plug.”
The problem with this attitude is that it ignores that there actually *are* limited resources. Regardless of who is paying for it (public or private insurer), does it make sense to spend $200,000 to extend a dying person’s life by a week? How about a day?
With a little bit of critical thinking skills, it’s not difficult to transform that question: 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?
When my grandpa was dying, they tried like 3 different emergency surgeries, none of which had any real effect, and it left him covered in tubes and bandages. He was 88 years old and in poor health, though. Is that really better than just dying 2-3 days earlier with your family by your side? 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?
These are questions that are worth legitimately discussing, instead of just saying “OMG, the gov’t wants to kill old people since they don’t care!!!”