The Cost of dying II

Commentary By Ron Beasley

In response to 60 Minutes' The Cost Of Dying one of my few conservative friends Rick Moran has a very good post.  Rick is not afflicted with religion which is probably why he can make educated moral decisions.

Now for the moral questions raised by the piece; How much do we, as
a society, value individual life? At what point does what�s good for
the many outweigh what�s good for the one? Should anyone - insurance
companies, government, or a �death panel� - have the right to tell a
patient and their family when it is time to let go of life and allow
the natural progression of their disease to kill them?

All of these questions and more like it are asked with the costs
associated with end of life treatment always in the background. And it
isn�t just the costs. It is the tremendous amount of health care
resources devoted to people who have no hope of recovery but make
choice.....

Now the person Rick is referring to is the 68 years old waiting for liver and kidney transplants.  He is not healthy enough to have the $400,000 surgery and probably never will be but his choice is to be kept alive at several thousand dollars a day in hope of a miracle that will never come.  The moral question is should we as a society be required to grant him his wish.  In his case we are talking about Medicare but don't make the mistake of thinking that if it was a private insurance company society wouldn't be paying the price - it would.  

Should someone make the decision to resuscitate this gentleman for him? Who?

This is what end of life caregivers are asking these days. And the solution, in an echo of Sarah Palin�s �death panels,� may be hard and fast rules on what kind of care the terminally ill can demand of the system:

By law, Medicare cannot reject any treatment based upon cost. It will pay $55,000 for patients with advanced breast cancer to receive the chemotherapy drug Avastin, even though it extends life only an average of a month and a half; it will pay $40,000 for a 93-year-old man with terminal cancer to get a surgically implanted defibrillator if he happens to have heart problems too.

�I think you cannot make these decisions on a case-by-case basis,� Byock said. �It would be much easier for us to say �We simply do not put defibrillators into people in this condition.� Meaning your age, your functional status, the ability to make full benefit of the defibrillator. Now that�s going to outrage a lot of people.�

�But you think that should happen?� Kroft asked.

�I think at some point it has to happen,� Byock said.

Is it moral when society will spend $40,000 on a 93 year old terminally ill man when children go without medical care.  The right to life crowd washes their hands of a baby once it's born but would scream bloody murder if the man above was denied his $40,000 procedure.

Of course in a polarized society there can be no middle ground.  Rick concludes:

I can�t stand people who approach these issues as if there is no
real moral or ethical dilemma; that people should either be forced to
die or that they should get any care they wish in order to hang on to
life even after hope for recovery has expired. We are fast approaching
a time when we will forced to make this choice and there is nothing
easy or pat about it.

Those so certain of the moral ground beneath their feet are
oblivious to the fact that they are really standing in quicksand. And
their arrogant certainty about right and wrong is exposed as the
sophistry it truly is.

As Rick points out none of the health care bills presented by the Democrats address this issue which is why they don't reform health care.