The very people who fling money at people with terminal diseases, are the same people who complain about the cost of people hanging around longer.

Yes Mr Johns. Particularly in America where medicine is arguably the most expensive in the world?

Why!? Because bean counting fools armed to the back teeth with stacks of statistics, believe that privatized health care is cheaper!

Moreover, big pharma relies on aged care, an oxymoron if ever there was one, for the sale of its most profitable product? Namely, statins, which as demonstrated in a recent double blind study, showed all those not on the placebo suffered some cognitive impairment?

And in too many cases, cognitive impairment, is all you need to ensure you're placed in "care"!

Look, a recent study by an American Professor, showed that caring for oldies in their own homes, cost around half that of nursing home care, one of our most profitable industries!

If the public purse is sicker, its because of all the bloodsucking leaches draining the life blood out of it!? And only possible due to the ideological imperatives of blinkered conservatives?

Who have successfully replaced the care core component of health care, with health consumerism, as if all that was on the table, was consumer choice! God give me patience!
Alan B.

Me I said in other subject on OLO. That everyone who gets older then 70 should be put to sleep without any pain, except people who are valuble to the societey like Doctors, nurses, pilots, builders, politican, soldiers, policeman, and other important people to everyone else. Me I am 81 and I come from Albania and I work hard every single day since I was young. Me I should be put to sleep if I stop working or cost to much money because I am very sick as well, as I am now 81 years of age.

40%of male smokers, and 28% of female smokers will die prematurely.
Which means 60% of males, and 72% of female smokers will not die from smoking related illnesses. (American research).
Government policy which discourages smoking (sin tax, as referred here), would not appear to be as benificial towards lengthening the life of most smokers, but by forcing people towards abstinence of smoking by increasing tobacco tax, sure is benificial towards the taxpayer.
A smoker has a higher privilege then, to actually smoke, because of that factor, by paying a higher proportion of tax towards health care than non smokers!

Obesity appears to be incurable. Against the smoker, fat people get off Scott free!
What is urgently called for, (to save the tax payer), is a tax on obesity: effectively a tax on sugar, and alcohol, another cause of obesity!
As a comparison, smokers are at an advantage to save tax payments by abstaining from smoking, whereas, fat people cannot get skinny; a very convenient captive audience for a tax grab, which could be directed towards health care budgets!

Me I said in other subject on OLO. That everyone who gets older then 70 should be put to sleep without any pain, except people who are valuble to the societey like Doctors, nurses, pilots, builders, politician, soldiers, policeman, and other important people to everyone else.

Thats exactly how the depopulation agenda will work when vaccines become sufficiently advanced. A small number of vaccines will be reserved for the 'terminally ill' These will undoubtedly be engineered to do their thing over the course of a few months so that no body will put 2 and 2 together or, it will be impossible to prove.

From what I understand this kind of thing is already happening in the US but in a slightly different.

Hospices now have an expanded role in the us. When a person is sent to a hospice the staff are not permitted to help patients to eat or drink. If the patient spills their drink or meal, too bad

This was a really good article pointing out a serious issue in our politics and health planning. If we want to raise money through punishing smokers with high taxes then we need to be honest in justifying it. The justification that they cost the tax payer more money than non-smokers is simply a lie. If we are punishing them for their own good then we need to be honest about it.
And we also need to acknowledge the implications of encouraging an ever more healthier society. That is an older population which uses up much more health resources as well as other resources including aged pensions, nursing home care and home support services. Unfortunately the extra years of life gained occur at the end of the life cycle when people are no longer earning or contributing to the nations economic output.

What evidence is there for Snowdon's claim that end-of-life costs are similar regardless of the age at death? I was under the impression that it was a widely held assumption throughout the 20th century, but does not actually fit the facts.

For a nation to be doing reasonably well in economic terms these days economists point to the debt to GDP figure. Now if we stop spending money on health for the sick and elderly, there would be a lot of unemployment and loss of profits for that segment of the economy, but the debt to GDP would look better.

I guess there would be some pressure to spend the money on the crumbling infrastructure, which would help any one who works in those industries.

Or we could just all decide that the debt level is irrelevant, as everyone knows that central banks can just print all the money we need to run both industries flat out.

Maybe if we stopped poking our collective noses in the various civil wars around the world we would all be a lot better of .

Chris

misanthrope
Your point is one that will be discussed a length in the future. It is defiantly time for people to decide themselves when it is time to check out rather than someone else.

I am close to seventy and in good health.However in the future I want to be the one who decides it is time to move on not some big pharma rep. As one of the early boomer generation i believe this is one more social norm that we will reinvent.

Chris