In a message dated 7/19/01 12:34:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
<<
My brother-in-law told me about a decade ago that there were cases where he
personally coded "brought back from a stopped heart" a patient on a daily
basis. We have the technology to spend hundreds of thousands per person per
year prolonging their lives. Indeed, IIRC, 40% of medical costs in the US
are in the last 8 weeks of life.
>>
True but misleading in a way. Most of us get sick and die. In the process we
have medical care to prolong life and an attempt to prevent death and
maintain function. It is inevitable that most of this cost will be near the
end of life. Medicine is really not about curing disease (we don't really
fight wars against cancer or AIDS or anything else - If we did we would lose
every one). It is about prolonging life. Let us look at treatments that exist
for heart attacks and something near and dear to my heart - treatment of
stroke. In the past you died from your first heart attack or stroke. Now
medicine can save you from the first several attacks and stave off or lessen
the impact of future attacks. Same for stroke. Now I know how much it costs
to diagnose a stroke in the period of time necessary for effective treatment
(< 3hours) and the cost of those treatments. Probably about 25-50k per
stroke. In the past there was no treatment so no rush to the hospital no CT
no fancy MR with Dr. Zimmy looking at your images on the computer the
hospital installed in his home (complete with DSL). So stroke treatment in
the future (and heart attack treatment in the present) can never be cost
effective.
The decision on when enough is enough when it comes to medical spending is a
huge ethical issue bound up in politics and science changing every day.
