Anyone who has watched someone die a lingering, painful death knows what a gift death can be. Yet in the healthcare debate that just concluded, nothing meaningful was done to address our obsession with keeping people alive past the point where they have any reasonable quality of life. The modest -- one could say even timid -- early attempt to encourage people to give advanced directives that tell their healthcare providers and loved ones what they may want was quickly -- and vocally -- shot down by Republicans labeling this attempt, "death panels."
When we look at why our healthcare system costs more and delivers less than Europe, for example, we find out a major reason is that they are not obsessed with keeping people alive beyond reason. More money in Medicare is spent on the last year of life then on just about anything else. Does this result in an improvement in the quality of life of patients? Most decidedly not. So why do we do it?
The basic reason is denial. We don't want to acknowledge the existence of death.
As someone who has watched thousands of people die in AIDS hospices in the 80s and 90s, I know that most people have not only made no plans for their last days, but stubbornly refuse to accept that the end is near. Likewise, many doctors consider the death of a patient to be a personal or professional failure and regard keeping a patient alive as their sole goal. When I asked my father's doctor about how chemotherapy would affect his quality of life, he said that many people consider being alive itself as sufficient quality of life. My 89-year-old father received chemo until three weeks before he died.
We can't deal with truly reforming healthcare without talking about death. We have to examine our values to decide whether staying alive at all costs regardless of the quality of life is really worth it. We need to change the way the system works so that you aren't automatically hooked up to heroic, life-extending measures whether you want them or not. We have met the enemy -- it is us. We can't complain about the cost of healthcare while at the same time insist on harming people by keeping them alive senselessly because we are simply not mature enough to accept the inevitable.
Trying to convince ourselves that we have actually reformed the healthcare system is actually another form of denial. Real reform would provide universal access while drastically curtailing costs. We can't do that while spending hundreds of billions keeping people alive a few more weeks or months regardless of any reasonable quality of life. America, it's time we grow up and accept the gift of death.
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its only happened to about half of us.
I'm hoping I can get on the good side of those odds.
Perhaps this is the reason why so many people shrug off the alarming statistics - 45,000 people die every year in this country w/o healthcare, yet the response to this is denial and/or a lack of empathy. 'those people should have eaten better! they shouldn't have lost their jobs!' If we were compassionate towards our fellow citizens, healthcare for all would be a no-brainer. This is the case for the rest of the free world. Its an issue of humanity and morality, not to mention fiscal responsibility.
I really don't believe all this right wingers *want* thousands per year to die and many more thousands to lose all their assets due to astronomical healthcare costs. But their level of denial is so great that its just easier not to deal. Just as its easy not to deal with reality of death. So we have choices - we can either prepare for it (live exactly how you want to live, make amends as necesssary and get your financial affairs in order), or, let it creep up and broadside us and hope for the best.
dying or to face it squarely and intelligently.
I was the one who told the Harvey Team who rushed to my Mom's room
that there would no heroic efforts to keep her alive. She already knew that
this was her last visit to the hospital. We had even talked about it as it was
experienced by her closest friends and relatives. You know ahead of time
when it will be your time. You can delay it but you can't stop it.
I told a friend, the wife of a famous artist, when she told me her husband
had been diagnosed with cancer--was given about 6 months to live and seemed
to have just given up--to try to find something in his past that he had always
wanted to do but kept putting off and putting off. Remind him of it, encourage
him to do it NOW. I didn't see her again after that. By newspaper accounts, I
think he lived another 18 or 24 months so I'm guessing he decided to do
whatever he had put off. Once done, he was ready.
One of the strangest statements I ever heard about death was said by
author Jane Roberts, and until I understood it, it sounded like a joke.
She said--
"You are as dead now as you ever will be."
I've since learned that it's true.
I watched as my mother died of a lingering, 15-year-long terminal disease. Her death was a gift, both to herself and to us, her children. She is, I am convinced, in a much better place now.
People who shun death, or who, as junklaureate has, damned the messenger, are immature. There's no getting around it. I had to deal with many like junklaureate in my mother's final days; they are everywhere, like little third-graders afraid to look at the world.
It is time we grew up.
Don't hold your breath that it'll happen, though.
Check the mirror.