Congress passed the Comprehensive Health Care legislation on Sunday, March 21, 2010. The Republican Party continued to 'say no' despite the evident needs of the American people.
There are two areas of health care that have not been examined with respect to making national policy: These are medical costs associated with dying and death. No elected official wants to be the one who calls attention to these two areas of health care activity. Here medical professionals need the guidance of public policy, which reflects the religious, ethical and moral values of this nation. Traditional policy and guidelines require all that can be done be performed, with the result that medical economists estimate that 25 percent of the costly services provide no benefit to the patient who dies anyway.
Today, much medical and technical expertise is applied to the 'saving of life' at the beginning of life and at its end. As a result of current medical knowledge and its applied technology, it is possible to determine the viability of a fetus in-utero. Yet our Christian ethics and moral codes prevent families and their medical staff to consider all alternatives, which deal with the developmental situation being faced. The nation needs to examine existing medical records concerning difficult births, which were not terminated (aborted), but which ended up with a child being born so severely challenged that it becomes a ward of the state. And that means that all of us pay taxes to maintain an individual who would not have survived without continued support. Simply stated, these kinds of births require an unknown amount of medical resources that could be used elsewhere where a more successful human outcome is probable.
In addition, much medical and technical expertise is applied to the extension of life when the end of life is inevitable. Recently, Business Week magazine (March 15, 2010) published an article entitled "Lessons from a $618,616 Death". Also, current research at Stanford Medical Center is actively investigating those factors, which may permit an individual to live to be 1,000 years old. It seems that our society avoids dealing with dying and death. Current religious dogmas, ethics and morals have provided no guidance to medical professionals with respect to dealing with the patient's demise without a lot of legal risks.
It has been estimated by several medical economists who always wish to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, that as much as 25 percent of our health care costs would be avoided if our society were able to deal realistically with death and dying.
As a former health professional, I have personally witnessed families spend their entire family wealth trying to extend the life of a loved one who was very much in his/her final stages of dying. We often deny that despite all of our medical knowledge and its applied technology, the death rate of humans is still 100 percent.
There exists a "slippery slope point" which may be very accurately determined from a comprehensive analysis of the thousands of medical records of patients who have passed on. Those researchers at Stanford Medical Center already have the raw data, which would help define the characteristics of that 'slippery slope point'. Medical care provided before helps the patient. Once that 'slippery slope point' is passed, medical care applied has no beneficial outcome. At such a point, medical care needs to focus on minimizing pain and suffering.
From conception to birth and to dying and death, the effective use of medical resources could be enhanced if we knew more about that point beyond which death was inevitable. Our entire society needs a very clear moral, ethical, religious and scientific knowledge to do the right thing when it comes to making life or death decisions.
Our current focus on 'saving life at all costs' simply continues the use of medical expertise and resources ineffectively and inefficiently. Our nation needs to direct some attention to this area of ignorance. No one wants to face death, but it happens naturally. We just need to learn enough to be reasonable stewards of the resources we have in hand today. Consider that life is so priceless that it is economically worthless. It is reasonable to acquire the knowledge, which would mitigate health care costs. There is still a need to set limits to health care so it becomes available to all.