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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (106)	1/14/2005 4:03:01 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 42652

Medicare. Don't forget Medicare. And they probably make VA look like pikers when it comes to bureaucracy. It takes acts of Congress to change things. And the feds determine how many MRI's, etc,. go into a geographic area. Lots of things need to be looked at. What's the cost of the entire bureaucracy, (hospital, insurance, and gvt ) built up just to handle the paperwork generated by the bureaucracy.HMO clerks telling docs what they can or can't do. Cost of keeping somebody alive for the last year of their life, at no gain in quality of life. (We need to change attitudes about death; there is a time to let go. We can only push a failing bod so far, and lots of times it is just for the family. I am so glad my father died at home.) Too many tests; a doc at Stanfurd used to say, "If you aren't going to act on the results, don't do the test." Unfortunately, that is forgotten. The ER has become the primary care physician; how much does that add to the cost of care? THESE are precisely the sort of questions I had in mind. But the thread is breaking into camps and bickering. Better to get facts, then make decisions.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (106)	1/15/2005 6:49:02 AM
From: Lady Lurksalot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Wharf Rat, "Cost of keeping somebody alive for the last year of their life, at no gain in quality of life. (We need to change attitudes about death; there is a time to let go. We can only push a failing bod so far, and lots of times it is just for the family. I am so glad my father died at home.) Too many tests; a doc at Stanfurd used to say, "If you aren't going to act on the results, don't do the test." Unfortunately, that is forgotten." If a person has good insurance or vast financial resources, that person will die very, very slowly. And, yes, families wanting/demanding "everything must be done" can be problematic. I'm sure you've heard the joke recently making the rounds: A long-time occupant of the ICU finally died. When the oncologist got wind of this, he gave the patient one last round of chemotherapy. When the cardiologist heard of the patient's demise, he did one last angiogram. When the . . . I wonder how end-of-life and futility-of-care issues are handled in Canada and in other countries with socialized medicine. - Holly