----- Original Message -----
From: "Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 1:12 PM
Subject: Re: Ethics, death, and cost.
> Alberto Monteiro schreef:
>
> > Dan Minette wrote:
> > >
> > >> <serious>
> > >> I believe you can't treat health care - and everything
> > >> related to Life & Death - by the cool methods of
> > >> economical [ok, ok] science. Or maybe you can - if
> > >> you add *a very important long term*: the fact that
> > >> treating human lifes as numbers will add a callousness
> > >> to *all* relations in the society that will possibly
> > >> be disruptive of the social order in the future.
> > >
> > > Well, I'm trying to use numbers to show that we are
> > > facing very difficult decisions.
> > >
> > Ok, and I am just pointing that ==maybe== using numbers
> > in the subject of human life may have hidden costs that
> > should be computed. Namely: that by using numbers in
> > this subject the society may become more callous.
>
> I do have one problem with this. Let's take two oposite and
> hypothetical cases:
>
> Subject A: A very wealthy old person needing a very complicated and
> expensive treatment to live maybe 1 or 2 years longer, gets this
> treatment because this person can pay for it. So a lot of resources
> are put into this person because of his/her money. Resources that
> cannot be used elsewhere.
Right, but unless you say that the state should confiscate her resources,
she is free to put them where she wants. I might argue with her morality is
spending all of her resources on that instead of doing good for others with
it, but I'm not comfortable with imposing my morality on her.
Now, I am comfortable with the state taking resources from people: its
called taxes. I'm also comfortable with porportinally more being taken from
the rich: progressive taxes. But, I'm not in favor of a 100% marginal tax
rate, even for the wealthiest.
> Subject B: A child needs a simple treatment that will result in a
> perfectly normal lifespan for this child that could die otherwise, but
> won't get that treatment because the no one can pay for it.
>
Actually, we can pay for it. I think we should. But, if it is the society
that decides, than the practical matter is that government bureaucrats will
decide who will live and who will die.
> And now please explain to me ethics and cost again in relation to
> death....
>
Sure. We can't do everything for everybody. My view of the best system
woud be one that would be chosen by someone who would be told that they
would get one of the places in the system, but wouldn't be told which one.
The one that most people would pick this way is a best guess at the best
system...with the allowance for improvements and changed minds with
experience of course.
But, we have to make the choice of how much to spend keeping our parents
from dying sooner and how much our kids should spend on us. Its not an easy
decision. (No matter what you believe, a poor child in the US will not be
allowed to die for want of a simple procedure..the cost of that care is
either covered by Medicaid or rolled into overhead in most cases.) We had a
friend who was absolutely broke, yet took hundreds of dollars of AIDS
medications each month. He got good care and didn't pay for it. (Well, not
more than half a percent of the cost.)
Dan M.
Dan M.
