for those expenses in most of the cases where death is prolonged as long as possible.

Most the the foofaraw in this country comes from preachers who know what frauds they are and are therefore terrified of death, whipping up their flocks to a frenzy at any legislation which tries to ease the process for people who need it.

There is a role by medical professionals that usually involves the increase of morphine and an onset of death. Yet, nobody gets prosecuted or looses their license for their involvement in what is essentially euthenasia at the final stages. Or, am I wrong about that?

will not return the person to health. Oddly enough, patients often live longer in hospice care than they would if hospitalized!

http://baystatehealth.com/StaticFiles/Baystate/Services/Baystate%20VNAH/04%202011%20Hospice%20Longer%20survival.pdf

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/hospice-beats-h.html

Hospice care is used when the person is dying already. Euthanasia is something that people who are not near death, but who have a very debilitating disease that ruins the quality of life for them which makes them seek death. It's not about 'letting' the person die. It's about administering or withholding something at the request of that person because they choose to die.

accelerating the deaths of the terminally ill?

I hope the day comes when the sick and their families are not made to suffer when the outcome is clear.

I could never do it myself for religious reasons.

First and foremost, how can you tell it is an end of life situation. My Dad had a massive stroke from a cranial bleed 27 years ago, was in a medically induced coma for 6 weeks, had to be resuscitated at least once (that i know of), had brain surgery and made a full recovery - he's still going strong, having worked until he was 81!

My mother and Mother-in-law were both in and out of the hospital several times in their final year. They both came out a little weaker each time, but neither had a clear diagnosis; they both had bad hearts that just wore out, more or less.

Sometimes, with an injury or specific illness, medical people can give an accurate estimate of chances, but sometimes there are too many variables.

The other problem is that there is always another intervention to be offered, and patients can be kept alive, but few families have the fortitude to ask whether the treatment offers a return to health or merely postpones death. Few would want a treatment that means spending another few weeks in pain or merely breathing in a hospital bed, but even fewer realize that that is what they are opting for when they ask for everything to be done.

Another problem is that people sometimes are suspicious that medical authorities are willing to put full effort into caring for their loved one. I've seen this in family members from a poor rural background. They will demand every possible effort be made regardless of the potential outcome.

Late last year my mother was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. No cure, but possible treatment via chemo. In the spring she started having tons of problems with pneumonia, anemia, kidney dysfunction, etc. We didn't know if she would get out of the hospital. Her cancer never advanced, but the other "stuff" was miserable.
After a long hospital stay she started to improve. She then went on to have two of the best months in her life. During those two months she got to see one grandchild graduate from college, and one from high school.
During the darkest of time while hospitalized she repeated that she didn't know if she could go on, and with her terminal illness euthanasia may have been the answer. But she bounced back, and I know she is grateful .

Now we know the end will come, it may be in a month, or it may be in a year, but in the end I don't think just being "terminal" should be justification for euthanasia, although I have no problem what so ever with enough morphine in the end to ease her pain, even if death does occur.

I think there are two different things going on. Yes, the medical establishment/industry will keep them alive in the spare-no-expense mode for as long as that can go on. Yes, they do that with very clear awareness of the financial benefits to the system of doing that. In other words, the system is being played for profit. But strangely, if you introduce a human dimension, the system will very easily turn around to the other mode, where they will accommodate the other kind of process, of allowing death to happen with the most humane methods of palliative care.

So I have concluded that the system is set up to wring the greatest possible amount of profit from the elderly by doing high-tech and costly treatments for as long as possible. But simultaneously very few of the medical people involved actually want to stop the family from bringing that to an end and allowing nature to take its course. The system wants the money, but the actual humans involved understand the situation and know how to deal with reality and bring the high-tech expensive medical exploitation to a peaceful natural end.

The problem here is that not everybody knows this or has the confidence or ability to clearly express their human wishes. Also, in many cases there is a lot of conflict within families, so that the medical system does not get clear directives from the family. Many people (not just medical people) have an intense fear of death and will do ANYTHING to keep a terminally ill loved one alive, even at the cost of torturing that person at the end of their life. It's not just greed. There a lot of things coming into play.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Same to everyone reading this who also has posted.

They allow us to make decisions before we have no control over what happens to us near the end. And if a loved one has a living will, it needs to be recorded at each physicians office and with the hospital upon admission. It will prevent families and medical professionals from making decisions that a patient does not want.

because if you don't, they will do everything to keep you/them alive. That's the one thing my family learned in the last months of our Mother's life.

and we also had a 'do no resuscitate' letter taped to the wall behind her headboard when she was in Home Hospice care. We had it all drawn up long before she died.

.. where medical professionals will adhere to the guidelines for a code blue, but they.. slow.. down.

I hope the folks who take care of me at my sunset have the intestinal fortitude to do the same.

But "allowing" euthanasia of humans will be the first salvo in the wholesale killing of the disabled when they are unable to consent, not to mention when they become "too expensive" to "keep alive." Who is to say it wouldn't stop with the disabled?

This is one area where the "libertarian" argument is completely and totally whacked.

Despite what some people think, they don't just put "undesirables" to death there.

So the entire slippery slope argument is, as usual, bogus.

and was dying of ALS. She had to apply for permission to be euthanized and be examined by two doctors (one of whom she never met before) who had to certify that she was not going to recover and was close to death. The first application was turned down by the doctor she had never met before. Her next application was approved and she availed herself of the procedure. It saved her from a terrifying death -- ALS was going to paralyze her breathing and she would struggle while it choked her to death. She died peacefully in the hospital in a humane way. I'll never understand why some people think this is wrong. We don't let animals suffer needlessly.

If a person desires to kill themselves, and they are of sound mind to make such a choice and without outside pressures, they should be permitted to do so.

This is obviously not the same as eugenics against the disabled or anyone else. It would be like the same as comparing allowing gay marriage to bestiality. It's not a logical argument, and in many cases it's more humane.

The law can be written that only the patient can do it and has to be of sound mind and terminal.

If you have moral objections I understand but I find it cruel to deny a person who is going to die a painful death the legal right to do so.

Are really the first generation of people where there is such a great potential to prolong life. I think we are in the middle of a learning process.

Also the people who are dying of old age are the parents of baby boomers - the world has always catered to baby boomers.

The more medicine advances, the more we will, as a culture, recognize when 'heroic medical intervention' is a waste of time.

Of course not all people who wish to be euthanized are dying of old age, but I think it is that generation of people who are coming up against the prospect of their parents death that makes death so hard to accept.

I'm not in support of euthanasia in most cases, but I think we should allow people to die without intervention - if that is their wish. There are cases where people are given too much pain medication and they die, I think that is ok for people who's life consists entirely of pain.

To answer your question: IMHO, I don't believe it's the big money keeping people alive - I think families are having trouble letting go. I think we are getting a better idea (because of these efforts) how often it will work versus how often it is just causing more pain for the person and the family.

I visited my dad's aunt in 1984 when she was 87 and in a nursing home. She spent the whole visit pretty much crying about being there. She couldn't control her saliva either and was slobbering all over herself. She didn't want to be there and didn't want to eat either, and they were making her eat, as I understand it. As a 51 year old, I would not stand for anyone telling me that I have to eat if I don't want to eat. But I realize that even now I could be forced to do so, and not have the power to prevent it if people chose to have no respect for my right to make my own decisions. She did not die until 3 Feb. 1991, almost seven years later. I never saw her again, because of transportation issues that I had. I started to go there in the summer of 1987 as a three day bicycle trip, but sorta wimped out on it for lack of places to stay.

I am thinking that she basically suffered for seven miserable years, and looking back I regret not thinking about her when I had my own place in May of 1986. I should have taken a week off and driven the 2,000 miles to bust her out. I might have been able to say "she is family, she's coming with me" and if it was like 1984 she would have been happy to go. I do not even know though if by then she might have been considered non compos mentis.

But that is recent. When I say new, I'm talking about in our lifetimes.

My grandmother died in 1983. She was responsible for her mother before she (her mother) died. My grandmother suffered all kinds of indignities trying to take care of her own mother. She told me that she didn't want family taking care of her when she was no longer capable of taking care of herself.

"Put me in a nursing home" she said.

That's what we do, out of sight out of mind. That's what is new - the wide scale availability of attendant care. At some point, I think we will be more cognizant of the importance of 'quality of life' and after we've been doing this 'heroic life-saving' method of preserving life for a few generations we'll have a better idea of when to just let people go.

I think we are learning. I don't think it's all about the money in the health care industry.

That's just my guess though.

and I agree we are in a learning stage.

My father and stepfather both died of cancer, and at some points the cancers were considered untreatable. My mother, who had the decision-making responsibility, couldn't imagine shortening their lives and went for any possible way to treat them, at one point even bizarre ones for a while. The doctors eventually just made them comfortable toward the end.

When my mother's time came, no heroic measures were taken, although some incredibly expensive things happened on the way. At one point her heart started racing and her doctor wasn't admitted in the only hospital with a decent cardiac center so her entire medical history had be redone at great cost before post-emergency treatment could be started. That was just one set of bills. Months later she died peacefully after questions about feeding tubes and other ghastly end-of-life things were resolved. The care she got was excellent, and the bills overall weren't exhorbitant-- a wonderful experience.

The problem as I see it isn't entirely greedy doctors and hospitals keeping them alive like zombies just for some more billings.

That may happen, but more to the point is that doctors think like doctors-- heal the patient. First do no harm and all that.

Every day a new treatment, procedure, or drug comes out to extend life or add to its quality. The point isn't so much padding the bill as much as it is that the new things exist it could be irresponsible not to try them. Then the bills come in and they are insane. Insurance and Medicare paid for pretty much everything so we weren't hit out of pocket so much, but the money, and we weren't the worst hit, comes frm somewhere and could likely be put to better use.

Anyway, in many, maybe most, cases it's not about money but how you feel about your relatives' impending death. It's real questions about pulling the plug, pain reduction, and all the other things that you have your entire life experience to lean on. And none of us have the exact same answer.

But, with another 30 million of us heading that way, an answer had better come soon.

It is mostly the family who can't let go. Consider what it costs to go from a nursing home to the ER to ICU to a ward in a hospital over the course of three weeks and then back to the nursing home for a terminal Alzheimer patient with pneumonia.

That's a one hundred thousand to a quarter of a million dollars spent, depending on the severity.

A year later a bad flu goes through and the results are the same. In both cases it is not an end of life issue. However, the combination may have taxed that person to the degree they require a longer hospital stay the second time.

Unfortunately, all this occurs in the final stage of life and that's where the costs escalate. This is without consideration of what ever else required medical intervention.

There are families who will go out of their way to find doctors and legal professionals to keep their relatives alive when life as a human being is no longer possible.

When it's my time to go, and it's something that doesn't take me out right away, I'll probably stop eating. That's my own nature. "Hungry" isn't that horrible to my occasionally anorexic self. If there's no hope, let me be. If my mind is gone, let my body follow.

That in itself will take the burden off the family and it takes precedent over the family's inability to let go. I'm not so sure it's always religiously motivated to keep a person "alive". Many are incapable of dealing with the grief of making such a decision simply out of emotional attachment.

It perplexes me to no end that the most ardent pro lifers are pro death penalty and have no problem with spending large amounts of money, mostly out of Medicare/Medicaid, to keep a elderly family member "alive" when it's time for them to met their maker while condemning the poor for being too poor to pay for their medical insurance.

it is the Right-to-Lifers that are holding this one back.

Two words.

Terri Schiavo.

Enough said.

The dying generally seem much more in favor of dying than those who are still alive and have some vitality and can't imagine going in that state. Then of course all kinds of stuff, some for profit, come up around that but I don't think the worries can be separated out.

This mortality thing is whack.

My mom died of cancer when I was only 16. She was only 43. Once it was clear nothing could be done to save her, my dad moved a hospital bed into the house, and her docs treated her for pain (though not very well) at home. I can remember hearing her down the hall, moaning in pain, every night while I was trying to sleep. It was torturous for her, and a nightmare for my brothers, my father and me. We were Catholic, so any talk of euthanasia was never allowed, and she was simply kept "alive" for months with no hope of recovery and no substantive pain control.

As much as I didn't want to lose my mom, those last few months were horrible, and probably shouldn't have been allowed to happen. If that were to happen today, I would gladly administer a lethal dose of morphine myself, rather than watch someone I loved dearly suffer like that.

I don't think anything my mom went through had to do with "the system" trying to squeeze money out of my family, but that was a long time ago. Someone upthread summed up my feelings, I think: Doctors behave like doctors. Do what you can medically to keep the patient "alive" until compelled by the patient or the family to behave differently.

Neither one got adequate pain meds. One of them would ask my brother to buy her cannabis. The other would bribe visitors to smuggle in booze.



Give grandma the morphine machine, tape the button to her hand and let her push it whenever she hurts. The cancer that is tearing apart her body is not going away. Nobody is going to rush in with a magic cure today.



If there is some kind of miracle and the cancer vanishes then an opiate addiction is a negligible thing in comparison. If her heart stops beating it's cancer that killed her, not the pain meds.

My saddest story I was working for a woman who was taking care of her husband who had Alzheimer's. She'd tell me stories about her son who had died of cancer. Just before I went on vacation her husband died. When I got back I called her up, and I thought it was her at first, but it was her daughter who told she was dead. A cancer that she'd hidden from everyone had killed her.

I can't imagine what kind of pain she had endured losing her son, taking care of her husband, and then hiding the cancer that killed her from everyone, bleeding out alone in the night.

Fundamentally both are predicated upon the dubious notion that our bodies belong to "God" or, by proxy, the State, as opposed to ourselves.

this topic. and it can be pretty sticky there. When a person wants to end their life, isn't it their life to end?

Pharma and Med Co's exist by keeping people alive - not living, mind you, just alive - as long as the money holds out. Think of how much money nursing homes and extended care facilities make just on ONE "tenant".

They're not going to cure you (cut off their income stream) and they're not going to let you die in peace & with dignity (cut off their income stream).

The other 40% probably comes from religious groups.