- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,094
- 8,878
- 136
Perhaps we could start here.
What bunch of anti-religious commies came up with THIS?
It's just money!
Ok, these are tough questions and tougher trade-offs, I know, but we have to find responsible ways to reign in our health care costs and use the money we DO commit to the best possible use.
Every dollar we spend in futile denial of inevitatble death and without even any increase in a patient's quality of life -- in fact, just the opposite -- is a dollar we are stealing from those who need it.
Provactively put? Yes. True nevertheless? Also . . . TRUE.
Medicare, the government?s health plan for the elderly, spends about one-third of its budget on people who are in the last year of life, and much of that on patients at the very end of life.
. . . patients who were devout were three times as likely as less religious ones to be put on a mechanical ventilator to maintain breathing during the last week of life, and they were less likely to do any advance care planning, like signing a do-not-resuscitate order, preparing a living will or creating a health care proxy, the analysis found.
[...]
. . . 11.3 percent of the most religious patients received mechanical ventilation during the last week of life, compared with only 3.6 percent of the least religious.
What bunch of anti-religious commies came up with THIS?
The study is to be published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
?People think that spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God?s hands ? ?Let what happens happen? ? but in fact we know they want more aggressive care,? said Holly G. Prigerson, the study?s senior author and director of the Center for Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
It's just money!
Aggressive end-of-life care can lead to a more painful process of dying, researchers have found, and greater shock and grief for the family members left behind.
Ok, these are tough questions and tougher trade-offs, I know, but we have to find responsible ways to reign in our health care costs and use the money we DO commit to the best possible use.
Every dollar we spend in futile denial of inevitatble death and without even any increase in a patient's quality of life -- in fact, just the opposite -- is a dollar we are stealing from those who need it.
Provactively put? Yes. True nevertheless? Also . . . TRUE.