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As someone who lives outside America and has a poor opinion of America's healthcare system, I think that life expectancy is meaningless without discussing quali
by cjs_ac 3y ago
As someone who lives outside America and has a poor opinion of America's healthcare system, I think that life expectancy is meaningless without discussing quality of life for octogenarians.
Even with the slight decrease, Americans' life expectancy remains just short of 79 years, but what is it like to be that old? Modern medicine and infrastructure has extended the body's lifespan, but no such improvement has been made for the brain's lifespan.
I remember going to visit my grandfather on the dementia ward, surrounded by the equally addled. I remember the toll on my grandmother of caring for him before he went into professional care, to the point that she died before him, younger than him. I have to ask, was the money spent, the labour expended by professional carers, worth it?
I'm not sure that when my time comes, that I want money to be spent keeping my body alive while my brain degenerates. If one can't enjoy those extra years, what is the point of having them?
- causality0 3y agoQuite so. It's fascinating how we take a compassionate, rational approach when it comes to not letting our pets spend the remainder of their lives in misery yet we cannot extend the same care to ourselves.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoWe can, we have just learned from history we haven't been able to not abuse such power.
- Qem 3y agoI wouldn't call it compassionate. The pets can't have a word on it. I think it's egotistical. Pets make us fun. When they stop being a fun source, we kill them and replace with "puppy-mill" sourced younger ones, while congratulating ourselves for our "piety". We force-sterilize them, for our own convenience. Just like slavery was once considered normal by slave-owners, but now we all see it as a barbaric practice, I think future generations will look down upon us, for the way we used to treat animals.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> pets can't have a word on it. I think it's egotistical. "End-of-life care accounts for about 10-12% of all healthcare spending" [1], though "spending in the last three calendar years of life reached 24.5 percent in Taiwan," suggesting "high aggregate medical spending is due not to last-ditch efforts to save lives but to spending on people with chronic conditions" [2]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282187/#:~:text=According%20to%20one%20estimate%2C%20end,%24%2029%20billion%2C%20respectively2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282187/#:~:tex.... [2] https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0174 https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0174
- giraffe_lady 3y ago> I'm not sure that when my time comes, that I want money to be spent keeping my body alive while my brain degenerates. If one can't enjoy those extra years, what is the point of having them? Famously an opinion held mostly by people for whom this choice is remote and abstract. In practice what we find is that when this reality is imminent, people overwhelmingly choose to live. Regardless of what they claimed they would want when they were younger and healthier.
- Qem 3y agoIt makes me sad the way people discount elderly people lives, as some lesser form of life not worth living anymore. It makes me skeptical about most proposals to regulate euthanasia, because once it's normalized, I suspect social pressure will start to build-up and press seniors to request it, even when they don't really want.
- Qem 3y ago> Modern medicine and infrastructure has extended the body's lifespan, but no such improvement has been made for the brain's lifespan. IIRC, it was discovered recently just the shingles vaccine reduces the probability of dementia by 20%.
- Auracle 3y agoMany vaccines have been shown to reduce the chance of Alzheimer’s, along with good sleep - which is important for your immune system.
- nradov 3y agoSo what are you proposing? Assisted suicide laws require the patient to be of sound mind. One dementia has set in they can't legally consent.