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How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of life?

How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of life?

  • Spend as much my money and effort as is needed to extend or improve life.

    Votes: 2 18.2%

  • As long as it’s not my money, spend whatever is needed.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • It’s a personal choice – your money, your effort, you choose.

    Votes: 5 45.5%

  • It’s a public choice – the public should mandate how much should be spent.

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Ask the one who’s life is in need of saving.

    Votes: 4 36.4%

  • Prioritize according to age.

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Prioritize according to past social contribution.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Prioritize according to estimated future social contributions.

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Life is important, but quality of life is not nearly so important.

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • I’m choosing not to contribute because of the idiocy of the question.

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • Total voters
    11
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
I love butter. :mrgreen:
Makes everything taste better.

That is what I primarily cook with.
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You seem like a lovely young man. Need a foster mother?

LOL.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
On the other hand, I enjoy living so much, that I'd rather have other people spend as much money as possibly to continue that trend.
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Operative words: "other people." Our survival as a great nation, in my opinion, depends on stopping that selfish way of thinking.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

MaggieD said:
Operative words: "other people." Our survival as a great nation, in my opinion, depends on stopping that selfish way of thinking.
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That's one of the reasons I'm not at all comfortable with government sponsored medical care.
I don't want someone else to decide, if I am worth saving.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

MaggieD said:
Operative words: "other people." Our survival as a great nation, in my opinion, depends on stopping that selfish way of thinking.
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Few of us can afford health care on a cash and carry basis. The rest of us need insurance....which is risk sharing. I pay when you get sick, you pay when I do, etc.

See?
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
That's one of the reasons I'm not at all comfortable with government sponsored medical care.
I don't want someone else to decide, if I am worth saving.
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Unless you're very wealthy, this will happen. Choices are: for-profit insurance company or government employee/medical ethics boards.

There is no third option.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Pinkie said:
Unless you're very wealthy, this will happen. Choices are: for-profit insurance company or government employee/medical ethics boards.

There is no third option.
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There is a lot more variety in insurance or more of potential variety, but things have been seriously constrained by regulation and rent seeking.
Insurance companies aren't without fault, but neither is the public, nor government.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
There is a lot more variety in insurance or more of potential variety, but things have been seriously constrained by regulation and rent seeking.
Insurance companies aren't without fault, but neither is the public, nor government.
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Yes, all the choices sux. Yes, it suxes that we have to choose.

And yet, we do. So what should we do?
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

My grandmother died in her 80s in a nursing home she “existed “ in for several years. She kept trying to die from various causes but the doctors with incentive from her kids kept doing things to make her live longer, longer than she should have in my opinion. Sometimes you just need to let people go.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

sawyerloggingon said:
My grandmother died in her 80s in a nursing home she “existed “ in for several years. She kept trying to die from various causes but the doctors with incentive from her kids kept doing things to make her live longer, longer than she should have in my opinion. Sometimes you just need to let people go.
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This is happening to my wife's grandmother right now. She has a massive stroke a month ago and has barely any consciousness at this point.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
I don't want someone else to decide, if I am worth saving.
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you might want to read your own insurance policy carefully.

if it turns out that other people won't be making any decisions about whether or not to fund your end of life strategy, then you have one amazing policy.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Helix said:
you might want to read your own insurance policy carefully.

if it turns out that other people won't be making any decisions about whether or not to fund your end of life strategy, then you have one amazing policy.
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Who say's I have to have insurance for that.
That is the primary problem with this whole medical care discussion, the though that someone else or something else must pay for medical care.

And we wonder why medical care inflation exists.:doh
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
Who say's I have to have insurance for that.
That is the primary problem with this whole medical care discussion, the though that someone else or something else must pay for medical care.

And we wonder why medical care inflation exists.:doh
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You can "go naked". Meaning, have no insurance. In which case, you will die fast.....even if you could be saved.

This seems like a terrible waste of a 30-something.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Pinkie said:
You can "go naked". Meaning, have no insurance. In which case, you will die fast.....even if you could be saved.

This seems like a terrible waste of a 30-something.
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It's an economic argument as to why medical care price is inflating.
Tons of theory points to 3rd party payers and the general price ignorance for the average consumer.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
It's an economic argument as to why medical care price is inflating.
Tons of theory points to 3rd party payers and the general price ignorance for the average consumer.
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O, I agree.

BTW, people my age have the opposite problem from you. We all want you to be saved, go on working and paying taxes. But once you reach a "certain age", most of us fear being kept alive, by "heroic measures", in a state of pain, confusion and all that. And we have to FIGHT to avoid this.

Seems crazy, huh?
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Pinkie said:
O, I agree.

BTW, people my age have the opposite problem from you. We all want you to be saved, go on working and paying taxes. But once you reach a "certain age", most of us fear being kept alive, by "heroic measures", in a state of pain, confusion and all that. And we have to FIGHT to avoid this.

Seems crazy, huh?
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People should be allowed to off themselves, if they reach such a state.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
People should be allowed to off themselves, if they reach such a state.
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Are you suggesting that you think psychiatric care shouldn't be offered to those who are suicidal? Elaborate...
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Jryan said:
Are you suggesting that you think psychiatric care shouldn't be offered to those who are suicidal? Elaborate...
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If you are in unending pain, something that won't ever go away, you should be able to die.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Pinkie said:
Refusing to participate in the discussion is itself a decision.....a decision to leave it all up to someone else.
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You could leave it up to market forces. Do you have insurance? Do you have money to pay for what you need? There are probably others basic decisions that could be made, but, at some point, someone won't get treatment who wants it.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

GreenvilleGrows said:
You could leave it up to market forces. Do you have insurance? Do you have money to pay for what you need? There are probably others basic decisions that could be made, but, at some point, someone won't get treatment who wants it.
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Yes. I could do that...but I choose not to. Given the population bubble the Boomers represent, in 2050 or so we will have two young adults for every ten or so elderly, give or take. I don't fancy a future where the young are deprived of care because the elderly are sucking it all up.

Those of us entertaining notions of living to be 100 need to scale back -- considerably.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Pinkie said:
We can't adequately care for the morbidly ill as it is.....nursing homes are full, and their staff are way underpaid and understaffed. What do you think will happen in ten or twenty years, when there are 5 or 50 times as many patients in need of this care?
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I agree. And do you know what could seriously put a dent in this problem? Legalized assisted suicide, that's what. Right now a person who is on the edge of being completely disabled from an incurable, long term disease has no right NOT to let himself be put in a nursing home, deteriorating for years until he gasps his final, painful breath.

Y'all want to withhold public funding for the care of the elderly and the terminally ill? Fine with me. Do you want it badly enough, individually and as a society, to allow people to legally have the right to die with dignity, a death of their own choosing at a time of their own choosing? Do you? If so, then petition your congress critters to make assisted suicide legal. If not, then shut the hell up, because you're the reason we're going to suck those precious public coffers dry as we languish in agony racking up bills our estate cannot pay.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

DiAnna said:
I agree. And do you know what could seriously put a dent in this problem? Legalized assisted suicide, that's what. Right now a person who is on the edge of being completely disabled from an incurable, long term disease has no right NOT to let himself be put in a nursing home, deteriorating for years until he gasps his final, painful breath.

Y'all want to withhold public funding for the care of the elderly and the terminally ill? Fine with me. Do you want it badly enough, individually and as a society, to allow people to legally have the right to die with dignity, a death of their own choosing at a time of their own choosing? Do you? If so, then petition your congress critters to make assisted suicide legal. If not, then shut the hell up, because you're the reason we're going to suck those precious public coffers dry as we languish in agony racking up bills our estate cannot pay.
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Agreed, 100%.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

GreenvilleGrows said:
Everyone dies eventually, but what amount of money or effort (time) is "reasonable" to spend on saving a life or ensuring quality of that life? Is quality even part of the equation? How much public money or effort should be spent? How much of his family's money or effort should be spent? How much of someone's own effort or money should be spent on saving their own life or quality of life?

Life is more important than money. But is all life more important than any amount of money?
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I chose "none of the above" because your question and your poll do not reflect reality of ICU care. Now having spent more years than I would like to admit being an ICU nurse and ICU being one of the prime areas of expense within the medical field I sort of know what I am talking about here.

Firstly let me google up something called "apache scoring"


Apache III Calculator

This gives you a predictor of morbidity and is used here to basically calculate the odds of the patient surviving. Now this is not the be all and end all of the decision BUT it is factored in so that we can go to the family and say "Look Gran has got less than a 1:5,000 chance of making it out of here alive" THEN we will go on and discuss quality of life with the family. Always age is factored in.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Harry Guerrilla said:
If you are in unending pain, something that won't ever go away, you should be able to die.
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With no psychiatric care though? What if this person is just Bi-Polar? I think you jumped to far to quick.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Jryan said:
With no psychiatric care though? What if this person is just Bi-Polar? I think you jumped to far to quick.
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Obviously, someone in terrible, unremitting pain has more than just a case of bi-polar disorder.
 
Re: How much effort & expense is "reasonable" to save someone's life or quality of li

Pinkie said:
Obviously, someone in terrible, unremitting pain has more than just a case of bi-polar disorder.
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That would just be a personal opinion though. An outside opinion might say your life is not that bad.
 
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