ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Kinser79]

(08-31-2017, 11:15 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-26-2017, 02:46 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I also support implementing a program to encourage people to write out living wills and DNR orders.  The most expense in health care comes from the end of life.  A lot of the time that is spending more and more money for less and less return.

Both my parents had living wills and DNR, as do I myself.  I'm not aggressively pushing it though to individuals, though.  Some decisions should be made personally or in family.

Precisely why I used the word encourage. I'm going to assume you are using the same definition of that word I am:

Dictionary Wrote:b :  to attempt to persuade :  urge they [i]encouraged him to go back to school[/i]

Perhaps an example from my own life will illuminate my views.  My grandmother lived to be into here late 80s and eventually died of a combination of massive stroke and heart attack.  We chose to not continue treatment after it became clear that she wouldn't survive with her mental faculties and ability to live outside of a full time nursing home or hospital.

Needless to say we had to make the perhaps cold calculation that she would not have wanted to continue on in that way.  I feel that this was the morally correct decision.  It didn't make it easy to make it.  I was lucky that my mother and my uncles agreed that their mother wouldn't want to basically be chained to a hospital bed unable to communicate or even live in her own house.

She did not have any living will or DNR.  I shudder to think what would have happened had one of my relatives objected.  That Terri Shivo woman was needlessly kept existing, despite all indication by the best available medical advice that she would not recover to functionality.

Ultimately for other people what they consider to be the correct and moral course of action is different, however, if the person who is dying has a legal document with written instructions as to their wishes it makes things far easier.  Especially when there are competing agendas within a family as with the Shivo case.

I think my objection to the involvement of politicians into that matter needs not be stated.