TCM -
I think that is unfair to try to pin any of this mess on any one person. The financial crisis has been developing for many, many years (see the latest analysis of Goldman Sachs complicity).
And we ALL know that the health care system has needed overhauling for decades. It's not that the quality of care isn't here, it's the delivery of services.
The vast majority of resources go to "end of life" services, rather than stressing "wellness". I am saying this as I have a 63 year old sister dying from a brain tumor, and has gone from Mas General Hospital to another hospital and now in a nursing home. It has been over a year, and she has been on a feeding tube and before that a ventilator. She could die any day. The cost of her health care for the past year has bankrupted the family, which had been quite comfortable. Nevermind what insurances have paid in.
She is NOT going to recover, and she hardly speaks. When she does, it is unintelligible. The week before, my 91 year old mother fell and sustained a compound fracture and underwent surgery. She, too, has been institutionalized ever since. Both my sister and my mother have been resuscitated. Both have requested "Do not resuscitate" afterwards.
I love these two women more than I can say, but I know that more money has been spent on their care in the past year than the total of their previous years. And neither are ever going to imporove nor do they have any "quality of life".
These are very difficult issues for us all to think about, but there is not an endless supply of everything. Not to mention that, at least in these two cases, the extraordinary care they have received has only prolonged their suffering.
I read an article today about the conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, who elected assisted suicide rather than endure the pain of cancer and cancer treatment. Their family travelled with them to Zurich to give them support during this process. They may now be charged with some kind of criminal conduct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/wo...tain.html?_r=1
Where is the dignity and sense in all of this? We would never allow a beloved pet to suffer like this.
My mother skrimped and saved her entire life, and every penny is gone. When her house is sold, the state gets that, too.
And then there are the uninsured who use ER's like clinics.
Something has to give.
SS