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Conservative criticism of Republican scare tactics about Medicare limiting futile care at EOL

"Do you have a solve for this problem?" "Let's all focus on the build." "That's the take-away from today's seminar." Or, to quote a song that was recently a No. 1 hit in Britain, "Would you let me see beneath your beautiful?" If you find these sentences annoying, you are not alone. Each contains an example of nominalization.... I don't actually care for "Do you have a solve?" Still, it is simplistic to have a blanket policy of avoiding and condemning nominalizations. Even when critics couch their antipathy in a language of clinical reasonableness, they are expressing an aesthetic judgment. Aesthetics will always play a part in the decisions we make about how to express ourselves - and in our assessment of other people's expression - but sometimes we need to do things that are aesthetically unpleasant in order to achieve other effects, be they polemical or diplomatic.

>'With unrealistic expectations of our ability to prolong life, with death as an unfamiliar and unnatural event, and without a realistic, tactile sense of how much a worn-out elderly patient is suffering, it's easy for patients and families to keep insisting on more tests, more medications, more procedures. >Doing something often feels better than doing nothing. Inaction feeds the sense of guilt-ridden ineptness family members already feel as they ask themselves, "Why can't I do more for this person I love so much?" >...At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture. When a case such as this comes along, nurses, physicians and therapists sometimes feel conflicted and immoral. We've committed ourselves to relieving suffering, not causing it. A retired nurse once wrote to me: "I am so glad I don't have to hurt old people any more." '