Do the Poor Deserve Life Support?
This is such a tragic and rage-inducing story. But, in some ways, it is just a more overt example of the rationing of care we experience daily in less grotesque forms. Doctors make many difficult decisions, and I wonder if the health care providers are being unfairly portrayed here. While I think class (and race) are always part of the background in which many sensitive medical decisions are made, I'd like to believe that we often rise to making such intimate decisions based on the humanity of the situation and not the lucre of it.
Do the Poor Deserve Life Support? - A woman who couldn't pay her bills is unplugged from her ventilator and dies. Is this wrong? By Steven E. Landsburg
3 comments:
Enjoyed Steven Landsburg's article. I wouldn't call his article "rage-inducing," however. (I did not read the blogs to which he was referring.) I have the understanding that we have a societal obligation to care for one another (which I believe we are currently failing in so many ways). I agree with the author, however, in that I believe there are other, more "compassionate," ways to spend what we WILL allocate to health care than to spend it on life support for the terminally ill. (I could be wrong, but I also do not believe her life support would have been terminated in the context of unpaid bills if she did not have a terminal condition.) -JenB
Thank you JenB for the inaugural comment! My original post was probably a little misleading as I meant "rage-inducing" in reference to the situation rather than the Slate article (and perhaps rage IS a bit strong of a word).
Though this situation is imaginable, did we ever experience it ourselves? I don't ever remember taking into consideration someone's insurance status or poverty level in end-of-life decision making. Is this a luxury unique to the SF health care environment?
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