You've read my mind CJ, I was going to say almost exactly what you said.

The issue here is NOT, I repeat NOT, whether or not we prolong the life of a stricken person.

The issue is - - - -

WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH?

I bet it's because virtually EVERYONE along the chain, from the treatment's inception, testing and onto to it's final readiness for the patient GET THEIR CUT OF THE FINANCIAL REWARDS.

Yes, yes. I KNOW it's called "capitalism", but somewhere along the line comes the time when peoples' lives (if they want that extra six months of life) are more important than profits and ideology.

So far, it seems to me that nobody's willing to touch Steven's main point with a ten foot pole. The first few posts seem pretty irrelevant and sniping, Foxy makes some good points as usual, but can't answer this damn near impossible question, and CJ and Master raise another very interesting issue, but don't seem to tackle this one.

Regardless of whether we can make the pharmaceutical companies voluntarily reduce profits to make medicines and treatments more affordable, there are still going to be cutting-edge treatments that cost a fortune.

That's the crux of it. There are going to be treatments that can prolong people's lives, but they come at great cost and resources.

Pied Piper, I detect a dismissive, somewhat harsh tone there - but frankly, I think this is one of the most complex difficult issues we face as a society and dismissive moralising doesn't get us any closer to working through it.

Lets face it - we don't have unlimited resources. Sure, we can bark on about all the bad wasteful things that we as a society spend money on (we need to be pretty specific on what we're willing to cut spending on too).

As much as we'd like to however, we can't keep pouring money into treatments that extend the lives of people by a short while, if the cost is huge.

The fact is, it's a black hole. You could pour money into extending the lives of a massive proportion of the population. You could probably work through our entire GDP doing it, leaving us with nothing.

I'm not kidding. It really is Pandora's Box. The best thing we can do is try to make some sense of it and draw lines in certain places.

And this issue is pretty damn close to that line. In years to come, I suspect we're going to have to be even less humanitarian in drawing that line. I don't like that, but it's the reality of the situation.

*People who do keep themselves in good shape save taxpayer's money. Should they be rewarded with a $100 per year "wellness" bonus?*

Well that is actually not quite correct. For those people can live
into their 90s. That means 25years plus of pension payments, then
maybe another few years in a home with Alzheimers, not cheap either.

For the taxpayer, those who "enjoyed the good life" far too much
and have a good old heartattack at 65, are far far cheaper!

*Thus, technologies and medicines that were intended to save
people from unnecessary death may actually have the
effect of depriving them of a dignified death.*

Words of wisdom there Foxy, another gold star for you :)

*I'd like to know why it is that this drug costs so much.*

Quite simple. They will charge what the market will bear. For it
costs hundreds of millions of $, to develop a new drug that is
actually accepted, most new drugs go down the plughole of yet
another failure, for one reason or another. If a pharma company
puts a foot wrong, the lawyers will be waiting with multi mega
million $ lawsuits. Somebody has to pay for all that. The
field of biotech companies is littered with failures who got it
wrong, including in Australia.

You are of course free to put your hard earned savings into
biotech, to pay for the cost of testing some new wonder drug.
Most likely you will lose your shirt, its not for the faint hearted.

“Pied Piper, I detect a dismissive, somewhat harsh tone there - but frankly, I think this is one of the most complex difficult issues we face as a society and dismissive moralising doesn't get us any closer to working through it.
Lets face it - we don't have unlimited resources. Sure, we can bark on about all the bad wasteful things that we as a society spend money on (we need to be pretty specific on what we're willing to cut spending on too).
As much as we'd like to however, we can't keep pouring money into treatments that extend the lives of people by a short while, if the cost is huge.”

I was just being an arse really TRTL. My husband and I when discussing health insurance recently decided that we would become deathists (okay we aren’t that clever with labels), our theory was that if we get an illness that usually results in death we should just accept what nature throws at us, suck it up and die like good non excessive life consuming old people. Choose not to burden our tax paying children.

In reality we’ll probably run to the nearest doctor with a stubbed toe. At the time we thought the idea worthy of becoming an important stand for the natural order of things.

But your government does throw excessive money at everything, why not life?

Umm... my father in law died of cancer 48 hours ago and I feel weird about this conversation, please excuse irrational future outbursts.

No I wasn't close to him so it will be irrational.

sometimes, we cannot think like that, in the front of life, nothing is worthy or not, especially for the people involved, imagine if the patient is an important person for us, how could us make the decision. just like what foxy said. it is a tough question. may none of us will be placed in that situation.

OUG,

I am not going to bother to respond to your conspiracy theories. I think we all know there are not "hundreds of cancer cures".

TRTL, Thank you.

There will always be leading-edge expensive treatments, treatments that may prolong life but at very high cost.

Foxy,

I am not talking about PERSONAL DECISIONS. If the life of one of my children was at stake I would happily spend $600 or $3,000 per day to prolong life provided I could raise the cash.

But the real issue is this.

If you are the Minister of Health what is the maximum you would authorise Medicare to spend in order to prolong life by one year?

Such decisions need to be made. Resources are finite. Money spent on prolonging the life of one person is not available to, say, provide three or four other people with hip replacements.

So let me rephrase the question.

The British NHS will spend up to A$60,000 pa to prolong life.

What is the maximum Medicare should spend?

Let's have a number.