4 ms·
ice cold alert. what was gained by keeping him alive, in a bed, not creating value, for 400k? the family suffered with him while he died. let him die, grieve,
by dustingetz 17y ago
ice cold alert.
what was gained by keeping him alive, in a bed, not creating value, for 400k? the family suffered with him while he died.
let him die, grieve, get on with your lives.
and save the rest of us the 400k.
- jrockway 17y agoWill you be this cold when you are dying? What about when your wife and kids are dying? Maybe I am just a hopeless optimist, but personally, if my wife/kid is dying, I am probably not going to say "BAI!1!", rip the cord out of the electrical outlet, and grin as I watch his/her eyes close for the last time. Ever. Instead, I am going to spend a lot of money to hopefully avoid ever seeing that. Because while you can always make more money, we can't clone people yet.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoMy own death doesn't scare or disturb me. It might happen suddenly tomorrow, or in 50 years, or in a million (if anti-aging succeeds). I'm sufficiently curious about what happens next not to be upset about the concept. (Although death is weird; I've never done it before.) On the other hand, I'd fight for a child or a (healthy, not doomed to die soon) relative with everything I've got. Which is why it surprises the hell out of me that health insurance companies aren't getting the Joseph Stack treatment all over the place over rescissions and life caps.
- giardini 17y agoYou're genetically programmed to protect children. Doctors and hospitals know this and exploit it. Unfortunately children with cancer or birth defects are money sinkholes. Spartan parents would kill children with defects. In contrast we keep physically and genetically damaged children alive (or on life-support in the case of cancer) at much cost to ourselves and at peril to our offspring. Would you want your daughter to marry a man who carried a life-threatening gene? Did she? That's what we're doing. Maybe someday we'll be able to fix these problems, but today we cannot.
- steveklabnik 17y agoSome people are different. If I was that dude, I would have hoped my wife would have just pulled the plug and saved everyone the money. Living in a hospital bed is not living.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoHe fought cancer over the course of 7 years, and it sounds like his quality of life was reasonable for most of that time. I think pretty much everyone would rather die than linger on in a hospital bed without hope. At a certain point, utility of future life becomes negative and returning to a positive state is not possible. The problem is that it's not so clear cut and obvious at the time that this is the case. A big part of this is that doctors often want to save the patient at all costs, and often deceive themselves as to the patient's prospects. So often even the patient has no idea how bad the situation is.
- steveklabnik 17y agoOf course. By reading a blog post, I have no idea what the situation was truly like. I should have probably qualified my response with that.
- jrockway 17y agoPainkillers, sleeping, and a laptop doesn't sound too different from my normal life. Except I don't get the painkillers.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dustingetz 17y agobut you're talking about spending your own money, not mine! euthanize you, and donate the money to a charity helping starving 3rd world kids get a chance at a whole life.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoWhat if a new technology had come online in 2006 that would have given him 20 or 30 years?
- dustingetz 17y agohorrible gamble. but obviously correct when you don't have to pay.
- aresant 17y agoThe 17 months he lived could have taken him 17 months closer to a breakthrough cure - holding on to hope is often times what people attribute this insane struggle to, and I dont blame them.
- awa 17y agoFrom the article it seems he was teaching for a lot of the time after the initial diagnosis... Also, he took the chance to complete some of his lifelong dreams (visiting Pompeii). And the bill was actually 250k after negotiations.
- dustingetz 17y agoi'm all for giving a dying man his dreams, but we spend comparatively zero on dying kids in 3rd world countries. that much dough could allow a bunch of children a chance at a whole life.
- pyre 17y agoThe difference here is that had he not spent that money on living, the money saved could have gone to saving dying kids in third-world countries, but probably would not have done so. It would have just been more profit in the bottom-line of some insurance company and less revenue for some doctors/hospitals, that's it.