Are You Ready for the Glorious Sunset?
August 28, 2015 at 11:11 am
(This post was last modified: August 28, 2015 at 11:11 am by SteelCurtain.)
So one of the (way too) many podcasts that I listen to is Freakonomics radio. Essentially it is life looked at through a rogue economist's lens. The host sounds exactly like Ira Glass, and the show is very much in the NPR/This American Life vain.
http://www.wnyc.org/widgets/ondemand_pla...son/527318
The most recent episode, "Are You Ready for the Glorious Sunset?" deals with palliative care, and the costs of end of life care (specifically in America) that are unbelievable.
So they are floating this idea, a very controversial one, but an intriguing one nonetheless.
Goes like this: if you get a "hard" terminal diagnosis, meaning medicine can only prolong the inevitable, then under a plan like this, you would have two options: accept medical intervention, or accept a cash payout (much less than the cost of treatment) to go the palliative route.
There are obvious problems. It does open the door to end of life conversations, and I am totally for that. Undergoing costly, painful chemo in order to add a miserable month to your life, I want that decision in the hands of the patient alone.
But if I can get pain management and live my final months/weeks in Bali and send the rest of the money to paying off my siblings' mortgages or sending my nephews/neices to college; that is the best of all options.
What do you think?
http://www.wnyc.org/widgets/ondemand_pla...son/527318
The most recent episode, "Are You Ready for the Glorious Sunset?" deals with palliative care, and the costs of end of life care (specifically in America) that are unbelievable.
So they are floating this idea, a very controversial one, but an intriguing one nonetheless.
Goes like this: if you get a "hard" terminal diagnosis, meaning medicine can only prolong the inevitable, then under a plan like this, you would have two options: accept medical intervention, or accept a cash payout (much less than the cost of treatment) to go the palliative route.
There are obvious problems. It does open the door to end of life conversations, and I am totally for that. Undergoing costly, painful chemo in order to add a miserable month to your life, I want that decision in the hands of the patient alone.
But if I can get pain management and live my final months/weeks in Bali and send the rest of the money to paying off my siblings' mortgages or sending my nephews/neices to college; that is the best of all options.
What do you think?
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
