Ouch! UK Debates Medical Care for Elderly, Unhealthy
A recent survey of 870 hospital and family doctors conducted by Doctor magazine indicates a staggering 60% of them would like to see free healthcare coverage limited or denied when the patient is elderly or leads a risky lifestyle. As can be expected, the controversy surrounding this survey is fierce.
One-third of the doctors oppose free treatment to the elderly but only when the benefit of it is expected to last for a short time. Those in favor of continued treatment, as current policy dictates, say denying treatment is like playing God.
For the survey’s purposes, habitual smoking, drinking, and obesity are some of the lifestyles considered risky and for which treatment options should be limited, according to many of the doctors surveyed. Many doctors see these issues as choices the patient makes and think more responsibility should be put on the patient instead of on the taxpayers.
The British government announced a plan last week that will offer cash incentives to people who are overweight, in an effort to encourage diet and exercise. By 2050, half the population is expected to be dangerously overweight if no changes are made.
Medical risks associated with obesity include heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Heavy people also need frequent joint replacement surgeries and stomach-stapling procedures. About £7 billion is spent on obesity-related health care each year.
On today’s money market, one British pound is worth 1.985 US dollars.
Smoking-related illnesses include lung cancer, emphysema, and bronchitis, with treatment costing £1.7 billion each year. The cost for medical care associated with alcoholism is about the same. In the past decade, cirrhosis has tripled.
The cost of fertility treatments and “social” abortions should be shouldered by the patient and not the government, according to many of the doctors surveyed.
The high risk of complications which occur when the elderly and patients with unfit lifestyles undergo certain procedures, such as liver transplants for alcoholics and hip replacements for the obese, is cited as one reason doctors recommend limiting treatment. Patient responsibility is another.
Still another reason behind the doctors’ opinions is the cost of the treatments on a taxpayer-funded healthcare system for many ailments the doctors consider avoidable. A small percentage of hospitals struggling with finances already deny some forms of surgery to smokers and obese patients.
Other doctors recommend continued treatment for these at-risk patients but placing their names on the bottom of treatment lists so people with more optimistic prognoses get the treatments first.
Critics argue that limited or denied treatment is just a means to save money at the expense of the patient.
Source: Telegraph UK
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what’s with all this complaining from you fat smokers, with your nicotine stained fingers and disgusting rolls of fat. Why don’t t you just stop smoking and overeating? Whatever happened to willpower? You deserve all the cancer and heart disease you get, corpulent dorks. Whenever I see a fat guy with a pipe, my blood boils. I just want to slap those flabby jowls and watch the shock waves ripple through the adipose wasteland of their fat necks. Stop eating fer chrissakes! And put out that cigarette! What are you.. .French? I think you fat sick people should keep your pudgy , filthy paws off my wallet. You people make me want to take a stick to your flabby backsides and spank some sense into your smoke addled brains! How dare you roll up to a hospital with your heart attacks and stupid strokes and expect us slim nonsmokers to pick up the tab? And Old people! Jeezis, there must be plenty of ice floes left in the arctic. Why not do the world a favor…if you get my drift. I’ve got your eldercare right here Grandma. And you drinkers, with your dirty martinis and and endless pints of beer. Did you really think your shriveled, fibrotic livers wouldn’t notice the abuse youv’e been pouring over them since you got fired from your last job because you woke up in a Korean massage parlor in another city with no Idea how you got there, or what happened to your wallet? Well…I for one don’t want to pay pay your bar tab! Sober up! As for cash incentives…why not give me the money? I can promise that I’ll make it my job to beat some sense into every fat drunkard I run into. If they want hospitalization, let it be from the welts they get from my rod of justice!!
Jean, get back with me on this in about 20 years when you are denied any medical service because you are to old to “waste” the people’s money on. Somehow I think you may have a different view of the problem then.
A perfect example of why socialized healthcare stinks. Make me dictator and I’ll accept it, otherwise keep it far far away from this person who takes responsibility for myself and pays for my own health insurance.
Socialism is evil.