10 August 2010
Letting Go is Cheaper
The cost of medical care in this country reflects the consumer’s desire to deny death instead of to make living enjoyable and fulfilling. As Atul Gowande noted in his August 2, 2010, New Yorker article, “Letting Go,” the medical profession has given in to this customer preference. Many others have also recognized that a high proportion of the resources devoted to health care is intended to extend the final months or days of terminally ill patients.
Medicare Chief Actuary, Richard Foster, was lionized in the Wall Street Journal (Review and Outlook, August 8, 2010) for declaring that the Affordable Care Act will not achieve its promised reduction in health care costs, neither for individuals nor for the country as a whole, because it won’t change the behavior of doctors or hospitals when they are faced with decisions on using technology to preserve patients’ lives. It’s not the market that will change the selection of end-of-life choices. Affordable health care requires wholesale reeducation of the public to accept the finality of death.
The nation’s health care reform program, unfortunately, is a political creature that refuses to admit that even an American’s life can’t last forever. It will not succeed in reducing the bankrupting cost of medical care in this country until it seriously attempts to change the longevity expectations of all of us.
The cost of medical care in this country reflects the consumer’s desire to deny death instead of to make living enjoyable and fulfilling. As Atul Gowande noted in his August 2, 2010, New Yorker article, “Letting Go,” the medical profession has given in to this customer preference. Many others have also recognized that a high proportion of the resources devoted to health care is intended to extend the final months or days of terminally ill patients.
Medicare Chief Actuary, Richard Foster, was lionized in the Wall Street Journal (Review and Outlook, August 8, 2010) for declaring that the Affordable Care Act will not achieve its promised reduction in health care costs, neither for individuals nor for the country as a whole, because it won’t change the behavior of doctors or hospitals when they are faced with decisions on using technology to preserve patients’ lives. It’s not the market that will change the selection of end-of-life choices. Affordable health care requires wholesale reeducation of the public to accept the finality of death.
The nation’s health care reform program, unfortunately, is a political creature that refuses to admit that even an American’s life can’t last forever. It will not succeed in reducing the bankrupting cost of medical care in this country until it seriously attempts to change the longevity expectations of all of us.
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