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Politics : A US National Health Care System?
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To: Road Walker who wrote (3483)12/24/2007 4:01:32 PM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (1) of 42652
 
What do you think?

I think that we should respect the wishes of the patient either way, after having facilitated the choice to not squander quality of life or money unduly, that is.

If the patient wants to pursue "unreasonable" treatments, is competent to make that choice, and can afford that choice, then all non-scarce treatment should be made available.

I think that several hundred thousand dollars of someone else's money for a few months of added life is unreasonable unless there is some extraordinary reason for it, like the patient being a heartbeat away from a cure for cancer or some such. I'm not sure what the exact cut-off might be. We'd probably need some dollar/longevity/quality/probability scale. Ten or twenty thousand for a few months could be considered reasonable, all other things being equal. Fifty would not, IMO. Others' mileage may vary, of course. The medical ethicists can make appropriate proposals. Medical ethics do not require doing anything and everything for everybody.

One of the advantages of a decentralized payment system is that consumers have some choice of contracts, including contracts that pay for otherwise unreasonable treatments. With single payer, Congress would have to approve the set criteria across the board.
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