This is one of the most comprehensive, up-close looks at what's driving health care costs I've come across so far. It makes so much sense. It really highlights how complicated this issue is. Also, I'd love it if we got away from the silly ``death panel'' talk and take seriously how we view and treat life at the end of life. Take health care costs out of the equation for a second. Are we keeping bodies alive to say we should do everything to save a life, when all it maybe at that point is a body with slight movement in the chest? Who is best to decide? How best to decide? When to decide? When should government intervene? (Think back to the Terri Schiavo case and the late-night move by the GOP to intervene.) Or should it never?
I remember watching a woman slowly die of cancer. She was in her home and in the Hospice program. She had already gone through multiple surgeries but the cancer spread through most of her remaining organs any way. That's when she decided to let nature take its course. I watched her, and in a manner of weeks, that feisty little lady, full of life -- even as the cancer at away her insides -- quickly turned into a gaunt-faced shadow of her former self, unable to move, talk or communicate with her daughters and other loved ones. It was an amazing thing to watch. That particular family loved that feisty women just as much as they did the gaunt-faced shadow of a woman and cried when her already almost-imperceptible heart beat officially stopped. I think it was a good death. That's what they call it in Hospice. She was where she was loved; she had made the decision about her final care; nature ran its course without special medical intervention at the end just to keep her heart beating. I consider it a good death. But would others say she gave up because she didn't direct doctors to do as many surgeries as necessary to keep her life going, no matter the state of that life? For me, sitting here a healthy man, I think I'd like to leave like she did.
