Are You Ready for the Glorious Sunset?

[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?

[SteelCurtain]

Guess not...

[Minimalist]

You're right about the costs.  Study after study shows that medicare is going broke because of trying to wring the last day out of people no matter in how shitty a condition they are in.

http://www.medicarenewsgroup.com/context...icy-debate

In 2011, Medicare spending reached close to $554 billion, which amounted to 21 percent of the total spent on U.S. health care in that year. Of that $554 billion, Medicare spent 28 percent, or about $170 billion, on patients’ last six months of life.

Sad to say, terminally ill ( and desperate ) patients are a cash cow to the medical industry.  Weening them off of it will be a hard battle.  If ( and this is a big if ) we had a government with balls it could say to a patient "look, you're going to die.  Medicare will offer palliative (hospice) care but no further heroic medical procedures.  If you want to find some doctor to perform whatever procedure you want, you pay for it.  We're done."

And then stand back and listen to the Sarah Palin-class shitheads start shrieking about "death panels."

[Thumpalumpacus]

As sound an idea as it is -- and if I had terminal cancer I'd cease heroic efforts once the quality of life went too far down -- as sound as the idea is, there's no way politically it can happen. The same assholes eh seek to cut most aid during a person's adult life suddenly find conscience at birth and death.

[Whateverist]

I'm in favor. Time to choose other than life at any cost whatsoever, especially when the quality of that life is shit anyhow.

[robvalue]

In theory it sounds very good to me.

I think they should also be offered euthanasia, in case that isn't already on the table here.

[bennyboy]

It sounds great until it's my mom or dad lying there. Then not so much, maybe.