End-of-Life Care Dilemma: Who Gets Booted from the ICU?

[1swordpen]

This is a no brainer for people in healthcare, should we keeping comatose patients suspended from death, not prolonging life. Lawyers talking about this is ironic since the fear of lawsuit is what keeps so many futile care patients on a ventilator.

[stengevarsel]

I'm glad I live in a country where this is not an issue.

[bradlyely]

The situation Epstein described has nothing to do with what you are talking about. This guy is practically advocating the fictional "death panels" that we have heard about recently from the fringe right.

I take it from your comment you are one of those who disagree with taxes and anything else that creates a compulsory contribution to the betterment of society as a whole? You must have just read atlas shrugs...

[LeGioNoFZioN]

you could avoid the death panel eventuality by doing what we do in Canada, just don't cover expensive treatments for anyone.

[thetimman00]

If the decision costs the family, the family might choose death. If the family has nothing, worked all of their lives, and still has nothing, well sure someone else can bear the cost. Let the people have their hard work to save and invest in the future. Let them make their own health decisions.

[JayAndJuggyShow]

wow... these videos are sure something. Good job with them all

[MegF142857]

I fully expect this thinking will become more and more mainstream as the baby boomers age and super seriously burden the economy. We hear the beginnings of the argument and the boiling of the frog begins out in the open more and more. It already happens quietly with elderly or very ill being allowed to die of thirst or starvation in "hospice" or at home, etc.

[coRnflEks]

This man gets it.

[GBS990]

Say what? No one has stated infinite care, be honest, the issue is, who is to decide if one gets a hip replacement at 60? Socalists need other peoples money and love to control what is not rightfully theirs.

What if the patient is a Kennedy? Is that infinite care going to be denied?

BTW- Mr. Epstein, are you willing to give up your cushy health care plan for the one Obama is offering? Isn't quite as cut and dried when it's you in that extra ICU bed, no?

[freesk8]

With government health care, cash is limited and bureaucrats must make end of life decisions about how to spend govt money.

But I want private insurance. I want to buy it now, while I am young, and I want it to pay for a million dollars of care for my last two years if I'm one of the 1% who need it. I am willing to pay for that peace of mind, knowing the odds are small I will need it.

But with govt health ins, I am not free to choose and pay for that if I want it.

This violates my rights.

[Smartassawhip]

Howard Dean just sent out a new petiton and is hoping to get 250,000 signatures in favor of the public option. I have it in the comment section of my profile. Please take a moment to sign it and then pass it on. Thank you.

[funkalunatic]

Wow. So he's against universal health care because he's IN FAVOR of death panels. Again, as if it's a zero sum game, as if we have to make a choice between giving care to granny or giving kids school lunches that won't make them diabetic, as if we aren't wasting most of economic might on bombing brown people and subsidizing the rich.

[blackiron60]

What a typical conservative - dismissing the lives of the "undesirables".

[eirefrance]

Actually, I think he's being pretty rational. This is where the death panel scares come in. In this country, we have the most fucked up end of life care in the world, its expensive and it does virtually nothing to extend life or make dying more pleasant. He's being a typical conservative in discussing it so cold-heartedly, but we do need to change our end of life policies.

[bradlyely]

You cannot place a price on the life of somebody who wants to live you jackass.

[razorflown2]

All life has a price tag.

You're too fucking stupid to comment.

Alt+F4 Go!

[TheEvolver311]

if your loved one is only alive because machines are preforming all of the needed functions (breathing,blood circulations,eating, waste removal,etc) then its probally just time to accept that they are going to die, because that is no kind of life. its unnatural, and i find it funny that for a nation which claims to be so strong of faith in god. that they would undermind his attempts to take the life of a loved one, doesn't "god" choose when people die.

[dale3858]

@TheEvolver311 I'm pretty sure that most people don't really have THAT MUCH FAITH in god, or any for that matter, and it's a good thing too, because if they really felt that it's gods will that a person is sick and dying, we wouldn't get any medical help at all...

[streamofawareness]

@TheEvolver311 Or they say it's playing God to pull the plug and let someone die. We're also playing God when we hook a preemie up to machines to help it live when it would have died. That's playing God too and nobody ever looks twice. Funny isn't it?

[thpt]

From being in the healthcare industry for a few decades, this guy has it right on. $.70 of every $1 in treatment is spent on the last 3 months.

Putting some of that money into helping healthy people stay healthy (and happy and productive) makes more sense than allowing kids to be malnourished / teens to not have counseling /mothers to have prenatal care, than to spend it on making my grandma live in fear, agony, and pill-popping breathlessness for the last 2 months of her life.

[2xtream]

thpt: what you have in mind is practiced everyday and has been for many years. Yes what you described has been that way for as long as i know. But you wish to put that pwr in the governments hands. The family will no longer have a voice in weather there family member should live or die. You want the government to do your evil. SO to act as if you are so humanitarian and act so loving in your hypothetical response. This is not what the government is planning. Read the damn bill I did!

[thpt]

I have read the bill. How is it worse than allowing those few millions who can't afford health insurance to suffer and die for want of care? And can you quote me where it says "the government has all the power and will do my evil"?

[thpt]

"SO to act as if you are so humanitarian and act so loving in your hypothetical response. " It was not hypothetical. My grandmother died six feet from me, peacefully, after three years of in-home nursing. And my Dad died in a hospital bed, in agony, of three spinal dislocations, pulmonary edema, pneumonia complicated by chronic bronchitis, and diabetes. At the end, he asked to be let die in peace, it hurt too much to go on.

He'd lived like that, in hospital beds, for a month.

[Americaisgreat123]

You read the bill? Which bill? Obama's bill? What's on page 941?

Since when is being denied access to health insurance the same as being denied access to medical care?

[2xtream]

I think your an ass. And hope that very situation happens to you and to think your own kids will be in the room and tell the doctors, that naw his stinking ass means nothing to us, and the cost will eat up to much of his estate, that we so eagerly await. So please pull the plug on this ass we want his estate now!

For all of you in this mind set please do us the favor and pull your own damn plug. If eugenics is what you love then by all means prove it.

[thpt]

2xtream: The argument is not killing grandpa VS being a decent human being. The question is: do we give grandpa enormous painmeds w/ a drug that will make him pee&poo himself constantly and make his eyes unable to focus so he'll live 3 more months in squalid agony and fear, VS do we use that money ($15/pill, 4 x day) to get our daughter treatments for her ear infections before she starts to have permanent hearing loss?

They're not easy questions. But looking at them rationally helps.

[2xtream]

thpt: What I said is true. If Eugenics is your idea of helping all Americans please lead by example. What part of that don't you understand.

Maybe a review of the Hippocratic Oath is in order for you. Or is that something you never heard of? Well give it a look see. It's what all medical personal SWEAR TOO! get it? You beg the question i didn't think we had to go to. But for the very slow. Who the hell made you or anyone GOD to chose who shall live or who die. My first statement was very clear.

[thpt]

"Lead by example": you're telling me to go kill myself?

The Oath says "do no harm". How is it OK to put down a dog who's in pain but to force your grandmother to live in agony as long as possible?

"GOD to chose who shall live": so you're arguing against modern medicine? Half of all women died in childbirth before modern medicine. You GOD doesn't have the best track record.