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<p>1) Did you bankrupt your family?
2) Do you understand that you can bankrupt your family and still die?</p>
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<p>This is why I said that some analysis has to be done.</p>
<p>I do expect a huge amount of progress to be made in cancer prevention and treatment over the next 30 years, perhaps to the point where a cure isn’t an expensive and painful experience.</p>
<p>We do make healthcare decisions as a society based on money. </p>
<p>We can read posts here in this thread. People dont want to pay 3,000 more for healthcare. 10,000 more. People are healthy and they dont want to pay more. I respect that. It is honest. I dont have respect for the arguments that business is going to lay off people and that is why I dont support broader coverage because there are always pluses and minuses and the layoffs are not the real reason why people dont want to expand healthcare. Most people dont care if wmt has 100,000 employees or 90,000. People dont know how many employees wmt has. Lol</p>
<p>Healthcare would be very different if somebody said… You have to pay 3,000 more in healthcare costs or the poster psych is going to die. And psych was in front of you. If there was a tv show called " live of die " and you could give the patient 3,000 or push the button and he dies, most people would cough up the 3,000. The show would have high ratings too. I should patent the idea. Some people would die though. Less than today. I would hate to stand in some trap door and some a… Says… I am keeping the money. Dstark, you die. And the … Pushes the button and the trap door opens and I find out there is a hell.</p>
<p>If there is a way to personalize healthcare more, we should do it. Many people have good hearts. It is hard to say no to somebody’s face.</p>
<p>I luvboola94, I understand what you are saying and I agree with you. For a family there are a lot more important things than money. In your familiy, you for example. </p>
<p>Amd why should bankruptcy even be an issue? In most first world countries, bankruptcy is not an issue. Bankruptcy doesnt happen when a loved one gets sick.</p>
<p>No, I did not bankrupt my family. And yes, I realize, more than you know, that you can still die after having treatment. But do you think that anyone wouldn’t try to save their family members no matter the cost? Surely we don’t value money over people?</p>
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<p>I think that this varies by person. Some people don’t care that they’re paying 3,000 or 10,000 - as long as they don’t think that they’re paying it.</p>
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<p>Is there anyone out there that does want to pay more, healthy or not?</p>
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<p>Do you think that people care if WMT has 2.2 million full-time employees?</p>
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<p>I think that there are limited dollars for charitable purposes and what we had in the One Fund for victims of the Boston Bombing shows this. If you have a disaster that people contribute too, they will contribute less to other causes.</p>
<p>Some problems are simply systemic too. I asked a railroad expert about the tragedy in Quebec recently and he gave me his expert opinion. The head of the company blamed the engineer for not setting the parking brakes on enough cars. He was very surprised that trains only have one engineer; the US requires two. If you have one engineer, the engineer could just assume that the air brakes would hold and not bother setting any of the parking brakes. That’s harder to do with two people. It seems like it would have been a relatively small amount of money to save all of those lives.</p>
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<p>Perhaps in some cultures.</p>
<p>I surely agree luvbooks that we value our loved ones over money, EVEN if it means bankruptcy.</p>
<p>BC- not getting what you are saying, except that it seems so harsh.</p>
<p>Iluvbooks94, if you wouldnt mind sharing, what kind of cancer did you have?</p>
<p>“1) Did you bankrupt your family?
2) Do you understand that you can bankrup your family and still die?”</p>
<p>BCEagle91, </p>
<p>That is grotesque. Is that what you would tell your kids if they got sick?
Is that what you would want a stranger to tell your kids if they got sick?</p>
<p>" But do you think that anyone wouldn’t try to save their family members no matter the cost? Surely we don’t value money over people?"</p>
<p>No, but it is a consideration, in some situations. I’m sure everyone can come up with examples of extremely expensive treatments that extended elderly people’s lives for a couple of months. If the family was directly paying for it, I doubt it would be done. I doubt the elderly person would want it done themselves. A friend of mine said they gave her 94 year old grandmother (with dementia) a quadruple bypass. They kept my grandfather alive after a stroke, far too long, in terrible pain, because they didn’t want to make him a morphine addict, apparently. We all have stories like this because people just didn’t want to make the decision to stop treating…even though we wouldn’t want this done for ourselves.</p>
<p>If I am dying, miserable and in terrible pain…just give me a bottle of pills, forget spending huge amounts of money to keep me alive just a little bit longer.</p>
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<p>Then for you, it was a moot point.</p>
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<p>So you understand the weakness in your argument.</p>
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<p>If you don’t have the resources, how can you fund “no matter the cost?” Even if you have insurance, what if the insurance company says no?</p>
<p>Everything has a cost and we don’t have infinite resources. It seems like we have huge resources but we have a lot of different and competing priorities. At the moment, Governor Patrick is debating transportation safety expenditures with the Legislature in Massachusetts. The roads and bridges in Massachusetts are not in good shape because most of the transportation money was siphoned off to pay for the Big Dig.</p>
<p>The Legislature tends to be more responsive to business concerns than the Governor so they want to keep transportation cost increases down. Do you tax more or spend less and in spending less, compromise safety?</p>
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<p>We absolutely value money over people. Are you putting yourself through college or is someone paying for it. Would you fore-go your education to pay for someone’s cancer treatment? Do you value money over people?</p>
<p>Sometimes, when the tone of thread becomes about stoicism, that sucks a whole lotta air out of the thread.</p>
<p>I just took a look at a research study in a geriatric ward in Belgium where they found that about 1/5th of patients had DNRs. Clearly there are families and patients making this particular decision.</p>
<p>Isn’t the whole point of ACA that fewer of us will have to choose between bankruptcy and life-saving treatment?</p>
<p>BCEagle91, </p>
<p>You are not winning any arguments.</p>
<p>You are looking cold.</p>
<p>I would hope that nobody ever talked to my daughters or son like you are talking to this cancer survivor and if he did, he would be gone.</p>
<p>Lookingforward… Yeah…</p>
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<p>The point of Social Security is that no workers will be poor in retirement. But the implementation is that of a generational transfer payment.</p>
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<p>Fine with me.</p>
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<p>I am cold. But so is gravity.</p>
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<p>If someone wants to pick a fight with me, then I’m completely happy to argue with them. I’ll skip playing the sympathy card though.</p>
<p>1/5 is low. 4/5 want resuscitation? </p>
<p>It’s true there is a time when the greatest medical efforts no longer make sense. But as a culture, we try to acknowledge the need for discussion, not pronouncements.</p>
<p>So, just to clarify, BC – your feeling is that someone who has an expensive illness, and doesn’t have enough insurance to cover it, should just off themselves? That’s your solution to our health insurance crisis?</p>
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<p>1/5th have DNRs. I didn’t read that to necessarily mean that the other 4/5 want resuscitation but they didn’t have DNRs.</p>
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<p>Why don’t you read what I wrote in my original post instead of building strawman arguments.</p>
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<p>My bad. Let me rephrase: your feeling is that someone who has an expensive illness, and doesn’t have enough insurance to cover it, should just die from their disease? That’s your solution to our health insurance crisis?</p>