"Ronn! Blankenship" wrote:
>
> 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"?
What if Papa can pay the $40K, and his heirs would rather have him blow
the money on that and keep him around awhile longer, rather than get
that part of the inheritance? Then it's just up to the doctor, but it's
*extremely* difficult to talk a doctor into doing a bypass on a
90-year-old. (Not impossible, though.)
Julia
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