At 09:19 PM 1/9/03 -0500, Erik Reuter wrote:
On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 07:40:37PM -0600, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:> just mean "Mama/Papa is 70+ and though s/he was in good health for a > person of that age before the heart attack, someone of that age can't > make any useful (financial) contribution to society, so we might as > well let them die and 'decrease the surplus population'." What kind of reason is that? How about, "there's someone over there who needs us and who DOES have a chance of having a long, healthy life if we can save her now"
In the given scenario, both can be saved.
However, bypass surgery costs something like $40K (maybe more). Is it possible that, either now or in the future, insurance providers (private or Medicare) will decide that no 70-year-old's life is worth $40K, so they will not approve a doctor's request for surgery on any patient that age, regardless of their prospects for surviving the surgery, recovering, and living many more years in good health? How about if the patient is 75? 80? Older? (And otherwise in good health compared to others of that age, with a good prognosis if operated on.) At what point, if any, may someone in a position to make the final decision on whether or not a patient gets treatment say, "Yes, that patient _could_ be saved, but his/her life is not worth the amount it will cost to save him/her"? And if there's any possibility of such a determination being made, how can the family be sure that when the doctor says "There's nothing we can do," s/he really means "There is nothing medical we can do to save Mama/Papa," and not "We could save Mama/Papa, but the bean counters have decreed that Mama/Papa is not worth saving"?
--Ronn! :)
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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