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On January 24 2013 19:43 HellRoxYa wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 18:57 NEEDZMOAR wrote:On January 24 2013 18:13 S_SienZ wrote:On January 24 2013 17:32 dani` wrote:
Though I would be highly surprised if a majority of people would vote in favor of a law like 'no form of health care is provided to those who have passed the age of 85'.
That's because you're only presenting the downside, you need to complete the proposal with "and the money saved will be spent on X / Y forms of welfare / infrastructure instead!" EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy youre basically saying that moneys more important than human lives. No, the argument is that the money is better spent elsewhere improving the lives of other people. Rather than keeping people who have already lived for a very long time alive for a little while longer, at great expense. Think of money as a resource allocation (because that's what it is). Where should we allocate our resources? Where does it do the most good?
If two or more people consent to pool their resources together then they can call it "our resources", but taxes do not fit that definition, and "we" should not be deciding together how they are spent. It is presumptuous as hell that you say "we will decide what to do with our resources" when you mean that you have a say in how someone else will spend the resources that belong to him, and you haven't even asked him if he gives a damn about your opinion. (Of course, in a completely different sense, it isn't presumptuous at all, since you know he will lie down like a dog for you in most cases, and you have the power of the majority to force him in the case that he won't).
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On January 24 2013 20:01 NightOfTheDead wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? Yes, and are you aware that many of them want to pass away, because they are losing sanity/having constant enourmous pain?
Yeah sure. Of course. I'm not saying everything is perfect. People who want to die, because they are in pain, or just don't want to life for diffrent reasons, should be allowed to pass away. And medical instutions should help them with that. I am all for euthanisia. Nobody should be forced to be alive at any cost.
If you guys are only pro-euthanisia and letting people die who don't WANT anymore, sign me up for that. But I don't think that's the argument-
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On January 24 2013 20:01 NightOfTheDead wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? Yes, and are you aware that many of them want to pass away, because they are losing sanity/having constant enourmous pain?
I dont know about your country, but in most developed countries usually doctors arent supposed to extend life at any cost, and palliative medicine in particular is all about relieving the patient of pain in his last weeks / months before death, so your question is rather irrelevant. If a patient doesnt want his life extended artificially all he needs to do is state so / have his will written down
On January 24 2013 14:08 sths wrote:
The biggest problem with today's mainstream economic thought is the belief that a nation's actions are limited by the amount of dollars (yen,rmb etc) it has access to. This hasn't been true since the gold-standard days.
A sovereign nation with a free floating exchange rate (ie: US, Japan, Australia, NOT EU countries or countries with pegged exchange rates) can never run out of its own currencies. The limiting factor for a nation is never the amount of its own currency it can get access to but the productive capacity of the population.
Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care......The health and welfare ministry, he added, was "well aware that it costs several tens of millions of yen" a month to treat a single patient in the final stages of life.
Statements like the above shows a lack of understanding of what money is. Japan's problem isn't that they don't have the "millions of yen", its that they don't have enough doctors, hospitals, nurses etc to care for their ever growing senior population. The real cost to a nation is how much productive capacity do we dedicate to taking care of our elderly, NOT how much yen this will cost. The good news is that productive capacity can be grown. The bad news is that everyone seems to think that the government is just like a household or an individual and must "save currency" to pay for stuff.
If you ask me, dedicating a large portion of your economy to taking care of your elderly is a lot better compared to how much we currently dedicate to the entirely parasitic financial sector.
Oh and who else thinks Shady should stop making these discussion threads and go back to writing about Chinese/Japanese james bond shit. Or perhaps another chapter from his life story.
thanks for writing one of the few smart posts in this thread,
so many people here have this image of "oh if you let this elderly person die, you could save a young childs life!!" which is just hilariously naive.
Btw. why dont we also stop treating all disabled people in the world? And all people who cant work because of their psychiatric illness. They dont boost the economy, so we might as well just let them be in their misery without wasting money on them, right.
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On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? As too the question. Yes. They can be a resource drain. But is that really a valid point? Should we let anybody die who is a resource drain. Cuz by that logic. Fucking stopp supporting anyone who does not contribute enough. People who are unemployed? Fuck em. Sick people? Ahh just let them die, we have a lot of new people in the wings, ready to take the spot. What about whole areas of the world, who basicly couldn't sustain without help from USA/Europe and other industrial nations, I am talking about Africa for example. They fucking drain our resources. Let's just go over their, take the country, let them die, harvest their shit and get rid of these parasites. I sure as hell don't think so.
Excuse my disrespecting you noble sir,
but you can go support all the elderly and all the africans out of your own pockets. Don't force others into giving to charity. It should be an option and just that.
Everybody has the right to live, but within their means.
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On January 24 2013 19:45 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 18:57 NEEDZMOAR wrote:On January 24 2013 18:13 S_SienZ wrote:On January 24 2013 17:32 dani` wrote:
Though I would be highly surprised if a majority of people would vote in favor of a law like 'no form of health care is provided to those who have passed the age of 85'.
That's because you're only presenting the downside, you need to complete the proposal with "and the money saved will be spent on X / Y forms of welfare / infrastructure instead!" EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy youre basically saying that moneys more important than human lives. It is. Human life has a price value, the only controversy is actually assigning what the value is.
Basically this. Not everyone is equal (they should be born equal). I can accept the fact that in my current point in life there are plenty of people who are worth more than me and plenty that are worth less.
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On January 24 2013 20:11 50bani wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? As too the question. Yes. They can be a resource drain. But is that really a valid point? Should we let anybody die who is a resource drain. Cuz by that logic. Fucking stopp supporting anyone who does not contribute enough. People who are unemployed? Fuck em. Sick people? Ahh just let them die, we have a lot of new people in the wings, ready to take the spot. What about whole areas of the world, who basicly couldn't sustain without help from USA/Europe and other industrial nations, I am talking about Africa for example. They fucking drain our resources. Let's just go over their, take the country, let them die, harvest their shit and get rid of these parasites. I sure as hell don't think so. Excuse my disrespecting you noble sir, but you can go support all the elderly and all the africans out of your own pockets. Don't force others into giving to charity. It should be an option and just that. Everybody has the right to live, but within their means.
No need to be snide. Can't we just argue, without bringing it down on a personal level by being very funny? Oh of course. It's the internet. What am I thinking.
And I can't really argue with you're opinion(you are of course entitled to one), just because it's fundamently broken(that's of course just MY opinion), because it's based on a worldview where no social security exists and the society as a whole should not care for the weak. In my opinion that's just total bullshit and would ultimatly destroy everything that the human race has achieved. Because it's basicly the right of the strongest from there on.
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I currently enjoy Australia's system of superannuation. It punishes the lazy fucks that decides to live on the dole but because it is compulsory and a separate entity from your paycheck it doesn't fail to help the workers that are just struggling to get by. Yet some people complain about it because it deny's them their "right" in how they employ their full income, that attitude says it all.
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Surprising lack of tact. Maybe "hurry up and die" is just a mistranslation or something. I can't believe a seasoned public figure (finance minister no less) would use such provocative vocabulary when talking about, well, anything (it's the kind of thing that can kill a political career).
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On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? As too the question. Yes. They can be a resource drain. But is that really a valid point? Should we let anybody die who is a resource drain. Cuz by that logic. Fucking stopp supporting anyone who does not contribute enough. People who are unemployed? Fuck em. Sick people? Ahh just let them die, we have a lot of new people in the wings, ready to take the spot. What about whole areas of the world, who basicly couldn't sustain without help from USA/Europe and other industrial nations, I am talking about Africa for example. They fucking drain our resources. Let's just go over their, take the country, let them die, harvest their shit and get rid of these parasites. I sure as hell don't think so.
I'm sorry but you're completely unable to process any counterarguments. Not everyone thinks the way you do. It's condescending to tell others they don't understand death and blah blah. Maybe try to wrap your head around the idea that not everyone is scared to die.
And yes, it is a valid point. Wtf? Resource drains should be allowed to exist? Do you realize at a certain point, old people will be stealing food out of the mouths of babies? You seem to act as if it's a difference between greed and charity. It's NOT. Simple truth is there ain't enough to go around. So why the hell would the human race want to keep a few decaying sacks of meat alive long after their usefulness? You realize the human race already allows vast swathes, in fact the majority, of the human population to live in abject poverty? Oh, poor grandma is half-dead, but it'd be a crime against humanity to pull the tube out her mouth! But it's not a crime to watch 5-6 year old Ethiopian children stumbling around the dusty street with bellies distended from starvation, right?
The whole point of the monetary system is that it is a decent approximation of a person's contribution to society. When you're old, use your own money to buy healthcare. If your savings, and the incomes of your children, can't afford the level of care needed to keep you alive, that is the point you should die. The end. There is no ethical or logical justification for why society should be obligated or even willing to maintain a parasite. And that's what you are when you dip into public resources to pay for your own health. It is the height of selfishness.
All your arguments are based on emotional appeals with little to no understanding of what's actually going on.
And why exactly would it be a bad thing for your bank account to be your right to life? I don't understand this diseased mentality of entitlement. Every other living organism on earth dies when they cannot feed themselves. But what? Humans are special and entitled to a decent life as long as someone somewhere down the road decided to carry you in their belly for nine months?
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On January 24 2013 20:23 Sbrubbles wrote:
Surprising lack of tact. Maybe "hurry up and die" is just a mistranslation or something. I can't believe a seasoned public figure (finance minister no less) would use such provocative vocabulary when talking about, well, anything (it's the kind of thing that can kill a political career).
I'm not surprised, since Taro Aso is kind of an asshole. He called the elderly patients in intensive care "tube people"... and from a foreign policy perspective, he has gone on record denying the 500,000 murders and rapes Japan committed over three months in the Nanjing Massacre.
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On January 24 2013 20:08 7mk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 20:01 NightOfTheDead wrote:On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? Yes, and are you aware that many of them want to pass away, because they are losing sanity/having constant enourmous pain? I dont know about your country, but in most developed countries usually doctors arent supposed to extend life at any cost, and palliative medicine in particular is all about relieving the patient of pain in his last weeks / months before death, so your question is rather irrelevant. If a patient doesnt want his life extended artificially all he needs to do is state so / have his will written down Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 14:08 sths wrote:
The biggest problem with today's mainstream economic thought is the belief that a nation's actions are limited by the amount of dollars (yen,rmb etc) it has access to. This hasn't been true since the gold-standard days.
A sovereign nation with a free floating exchange rate (ie: US, Japan, Australia, NOT EU countries or countries with pegged exchange rates) can never run out of its own currencies. The limiting factor for a nation is never the amount of its own currency it can get access to but the productive capacity of the population.
Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care......The health and welfare ministry, he added, was "well aware that it costs several tens of millions of yen" a month to treat a single patient in the final stages of life.
Statements like the above shows a lack of understanding of what money is. Japan's problem isn't that they don't have the "millions of yen", its that they don't have enough doctors, hospitals, nurses etc to care for their ever growing senior population. The real cost to a nation is how much productive capacity do we dedicate to taking care of our elderly, NOT how much yen this will cost. The good news is that productive capacity can be grown. The bad news is that everyone seems to think that the government is just like a household or an individual and must "save currency" to pay for stuff.
If you ask me, dedicating a large portion of your economy to taking care of your elderly is a lot better compared to how much we currently dedicate to the entirely parasitic financial sector.
Oh and who else thinks Shady should stop making these discussion threads and go back to writing about Chinese/Japanese james bond shit. Or perhaps another chapter from his life story.
thanks for writing one of the few smart posts in this thread, so many people here have this image of "oh if you let this elderly person die, you could save a young childs life!!" which is just hilariously naive. Btw. why dont we also stop treating all disabled people in the world? And all people who cant work because of their psychiatric illness. They dont boost the economy, so we might as well just let them be in their misery without wasting money on them, right.
Utterly wrong. Money and labor productivity are intrinsically connected. Money is the incentive for labor. Without money, you have no production. Wtf would people work for no money? Productive capacity is nothing but an abstract ideal. Reality doesn't work that way. A society rarely, if ever, operates at maximum productive capacity, so no, it still boils down to money because that is the most accurate representation of resources and labor supply.
You can't just force people to become doctors and nurses because they have the ability. You have to grow the sector through normal economic activity and market pressures. I'm pretty sure I could handle a nurse's job, but it would take a ridiculous amount of money to convince me to become one. At the end of the day, labor markets are driven by supply and demand and those both function using money.
And the logic of putting more money into elderly care because the financial sector sucks too is terrible. Two wrongs don't make a right.
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On January 24 2013 14:01 Larkin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 13:56 Parnage wrote:
You know, I..I don't even know what the hell is wrong with a person to think that it's okay to say "Yeah no, we can't waste resources on you, time for you to die" Screw the money, how about the morality. Who's got the nads to be the one to say who can live and who can die and at what point is it just "too much of a burden"? Whoever they are I can only hope they never get any real power because history is littered with despots and madmen who thought that he had the right to judge who lives and dies and rather or not someone was useful to society. 1. Morality isn't real. 2. It's not about the person in charge deciding, it's about democracy. The will of the people. Should people decide a "cut off point" for the elderly.
So what you're saying is that the Holocaust of the 1940'ies was perfectly fine and dandy because 1) morality isn't real and 2) Adolf Hitler was democratically elected by the German people in 1933?
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On January 24 2013 20:41 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 14:01 Larkin wrote:On January 24 2013 13:56 Parnage wrote:
You know, I..I don't even know what the hell is wrong with a person to think that it's okay to say "Yeah no, we can't waste resources on you, time for you to die" Screw the money, how about the morality. Who's got the nads to be the one to say who can live and who can die and at what point is it just "too much of a burden"? Whoever they are I can only hope they never get any real power because history is littered with despots and madmen who thought that he had the right to judge who lives and dies and rather or not someone was useful to society. 1. Morality isn't real. 2. It's not about the person in charge deciding, it's about democracy. The will of the people. Should people decide a "cut off point" for the elderly. So what you're saying is that the Holocaust of the 1940'ies was perfectly fine and dandy because 1) morality isn't real and 2) Adolf Hitler was democratically elected by the German people in 1933?
It doesn't make it real. A lot of people found nuking Japan twice and setting Vietnam on fire perfectly fine and dandy, these are probably some of the same people who would be disgusted by the Holocaust. What I believe is "right" or "wrong" was due to my upbringing and the societal environment at the time, not by some magical code. If morality is the construct of society that changes from time to time then yes it is real but it is anything but natural or objective.
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I think that making this an age discussion is wrong/short-sighted. One 80 year old can be a lot more healthy than another 60 year old. An operation on one 80 year old could prolong life by 10 years, while on a 20 year old it could only prolong life by 5 years. I think taking someones value/productivity into the equation is even more wrong and shows a glaring flaw in neo liberalism/kapitalism. People work to live a good/better live. People dont live to provide productivity/generate money.
So, if there truly needs to be a debate about if we can "afford" to take care of our own elderly. I don't think the debate should be based on age, but on quality of life. As in, end-of-life procedures often only extend the life by a couple of months, those months are spent in a hospital instead of with family and the patient is often not happier in these last couple of months and would have been better off dying a bit earlier at home, at peace. End-of-life procedures are not age-bound. It can be the last couple of months of the life of a 20 year old cancer patient as well. These last months happen to be very expensive as well, but I still think it is up to the physician and the patient to decide if the procedure is wanted.
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On January 24 2013 20:49 Domus wrote:
I think that making this an age discussion is wrong/short-sighted. One 80 year old can be a lot more healthy than another 60 year old. An operation on one 80 year old could prolong life by 10 years, while on a 20 year old it could only prolong life by 5 years. I think taking someones value/productivity into the equation is even more wrong and shows a glaring flaw in neo liberalism/kapitalism. People work to live a good/better live. People dont live to provide productivity/generate money.
So, if there truly needs to be a debate about if we can "afford" to take care of our own elderly. I don't think the debate should be based on age, but on quality of life. As in, end-of-life procedures often only extend the life by a couple of months, those months are spent in a hospital instead of with family and the patient is often not happier in these last couple of months and would have been better off dying a bit earlier at home, at peace. End-of-life procedures are not age-bound. It can be the last couple of months of the life of a 20 year old cancer patient as well. These last months happen to be very expensive as well, but I still think it is up to the physician and the patient to decide if the procedure is wanted.
The problem is whether or not society should pay for these operations. We wouldn't give two figs if the person could afford it on their own. You're missing the point of the debate. People work to live a good/better life, but society doesn't exist for that. Society exists to maintain a stable, mutually agreed system in which people can compete to live good/better lives. Note the compete part. It's not guaranteed. Otherwise, we would all just sit on our asses playing SC2 and letting someone else guarantee our comfortable lifestyle. That's why the Constitution says PURSUIT of happiness, not GUARANTEE of happiness.
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Every person starts as a parasite -- but, usually with the understanding that they will become helpful in the future. When you speak of people whose ability to contribute will never again compare to the resources required to preserve them, you speak of people that society has little cause to preserve. Individuals to whom those people hold special value may have cause to preserve them, but not society at large.
One might invoke morality -- people have a right to live, to the extent that we can secure it for them -- but in that case, we're morally obligated to first help people we can save cheaply, so that our limited resources can cover as many people as possible...
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On January 24 2013 20:41 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 14:01 Larkin wrote:On January 24 2013 13:56 Parnage wrote:
You know, I..I don't even know what the hell is wrong with a person to think that it's okay to say "Yeah no, we can't waste resources on you, time for you to die" Screw the money, how about the morality. Who's got the nads to be the one to say who can live and who can die and at what point is it just "too much of a burden"? Whoever they are I can only hope they never get any real power because history is littered with despots and madmen who thought that he had the right to judge who lives and dies and rather or not someone was useful to society. 1. Morality isn't real. 2. It's not about the person in charge deciding, it's about democracy. The will of the people. Should people decide a "cut off point" for the elderly. So what you're saying is that the Holocaust of the 1940'ies was perfectly fine and dandy because 1) morality isn't real and 2) Adolf Hitler was democratically elected by the German people in 1933?
Humans are a social species. We or our ancestors, if you will, "decided" that living in groups is the best strategy for survival so they adapted to this type of life. We can list empathy and the sense of morality as adaptations to social life. We needed to evolve them to be able to live in groups that are healty and functional. So I would encorage you to view morality as a functional issue, we just need some kind of rules to keep our society working properly. And now that we are sentient we can explicitly discuss what is best achieving our healthy society goal. Morality is not real, divine or whatever, it is a biological adaptation, and it happens that there might be different approaches to morality/rules of society that give the same outcome qualitatively.(this actually dependent on our notion of good, that can evolve in time, so you can see morality evolving over time as well; see how the ancient Greeks and Romans had a different perspective on life)
I can also list organized religion, the state, nationalism as newer adaptations, or ideas if you will, that allow us to live comfortably in societies larger than Dunbar's number(this is what civilization is btw). The same line can be applied to socialism. It came from a debate on what is the best way to ensure the health of society, civilization. Books can and have been written about this, socialism does not succeed at this goal.
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I think the healthcare professionals and the elderly patients themselves would have the most valuable opinions to offer in this debate, because lines need to be drawn between the "excessive life-prolonging treatments" and reasonable healthcare. My mom has been a nurse for 30+ years and is able to see the patterns.
Depending on what their problems are, some very old people can be treated and are able to live independently for many more years, but if they are treated half-assedly it's a sentence to a slow death in the hospital. Many are doomed to this to begin with due to uncurable degenerative diseases, but not all.
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Didn't know life expectancy was higher in japan and sweden compared to Norway. :o
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On January 24 2013 19:43 HellRoxYa wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 18:57 NEEDZMOAR wrote:On January 24 2013 18:13 S_SienZ wrote:On January 24 2013 17:32 dani` wrote:
Though I would be highly surprised if a majority of people would vote in favor of a law like 'no form of health care is provided to those who have passed the age of 85'.
That's because you're only presenting the downside, you need to complete the proposal with "and the money saved will be spent on X / Y forms of welfare / infrastructure instead!" EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy youre basically saying that moneys more important than human lives. No, the argument is that the money is better spent elsewhere improving the lives of other people. Rather than keeping people who have already lived for a very long time alive for a little while longer, at great expense. Think of money as a resource allocation (because that's what it is). Where should we allocate our resources? Where does it do the most good?
Fair enough, my point was (still is) that money shouldnt matter, IMO its not elderly that is the problem, its capitalism and the way the few taking advantage of the many.
The way some people in this thread speak of humans as a resource, when they are old and used up, we should dump them because the society demands fresh resources thus should not keep up the used up resources.. makes me think of the way the robots in the matrix movies feeds on humans as batteries...
The system should be used, people should not be overused by the system.
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EPT
