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Jon Snow

Op-Ed Contributor - Health Care's Generation Gap - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17dooling.html

shared by Jon Snow on 23 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Families spent their entire savings so Grandma could make yet another trip to the surgical suite on the slim-to-none chance that bypass surgery, a thoracotomy, an endoscopy or kidney dialysis might get her off the ventilator and out of the hospital in time for her 88th birthday.
  • I and other health care workers solemnly agreed that the spending spree could not continue. Taxpayers and insurance companies would eventually revolt and refuse to pay for such end-of-life care
  • Somebody would surely expose the ruse for what it was: an enormous transfer of wealth based on the pretense that getting old and dying is a medical emergency requiring high-tech intensive-care intervention and armies of specialists, which could cost $10,000 or more per day.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But we were wrong. Health care spending has since doubled, to around 16 percent of our gross domestic product, and in the next 25 years or so is projected to reach 31 percent of G.D.P
  • and more follow-up scans and procedures (in stand-alone clinics owned by the same doctors prescribing the tests, scans and procedures).
  • A cynic would argue that this can’t happen because children can’t vote (even if their parents can),
  • We’ll be forced to implement quick-and-dirty rules based on something simple, sensible and easily verifiable. Like age. As in: No federal funds to be spent on intensive-care medicine for anyone over 85.
  • I am not, of course, talking about euthanasia.
  • Perhaps the second duty should be to administer an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure.
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