Unworthy of medical care?

1 "Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. "Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not. " Friess asks: "Are these the values we want undergirding our healthcare system?" .

This means my son, Chris, would be denied healthcare. He is profoundly retarded. But look at that last quote: "Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.

" Excuse me? More life years is exactly what age is about! Under this plan, I probably would be denied the artificial hip I need.

My son would be denied the medical care he needs. My husband, who is an active physicist and astronomer at the ripe old age of 67, is also a porphyriac (look it up) and would be denied the medical care he needs just because he has had more life-years than many of you.In other words, he is older. So much for respect and honoring the aged.

Ethically and morally our culture is sinking faster than a block of concrete in water.

3 My suggestion: whenever you read a sentence that seems to suggest that somebody holds a ludicrous position, ask to see the preceding and succeeding sentences. It's very easy to take a single sentence out of context to make it seem as if somebody holds a more extreme position than they do. Often, I find that passages are excerpted precisely so that the very next or previous sentence radically changes the implied meaning.

Emanuel is trying to face up to the fact that there is more demand for health care than we can afford. That ALWAYS means saying "no" to somebody. There is no system under which we all get all the health care we want.So pointing to any system and saying, "But under that scheme X would be denied Y" is vacuous; that's true in every system for some X and Y.

The current system denies a great many people health care of various sorts; that's why so much pressure to change it. So I find it hard to either condemn or defend Emanuel's ethics without reading the whole paper.

4 So read the paper, Pam. In socialized health care there are classes of people denied that care, and people like my son are going to be at the top of that list. The Rahms are simply admitting that.My baby granddaughter was a preemie.

Perhaps she would not have been allowed to live? This is EXACTLY what is happening in other countries with socialized health care.It is not extreme to note that it would also happen here or that some of those in charge are trying to desensitize people to that.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.