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  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Modern medicine is very good at keeping elderly people with chronic diseases expensively alive. Just 10 percent of the population — mainly the elderly —consumes about 80 percent of health care expenditures, primarily on expensive chronic illnesses and end-of-life costs.

    Older people who stay longer in the work force, as many are now forced to do, will close out opportunities for younger workers coming in. And exactly what are the potential social benefits? Is there any evidence that more old people will make special contributions now?

    We are not obliged to help the old become indefinitely older. Our duty may be just the reverse: to let death have its day.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/on-dying-after-your-time.html?_r=2&

  • 4 Replies sorted by
  • Sk0grSk0gr

    What a cynical comment, why live at all then? Do you want to set max age at 30 or 25?

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    What a cynical comment, why live at all then? Do you want to set max age at 30 or 25?

    You tell this to whom?

    Is you want unbiased opinion - with resource shortage people couldn't longer provide huge part of them to population part that do not produce anything. Period. Like it or not. This note is just very early bird in coming year or two it'll become widespread and normal.

  • nomadnomad

    Remember "Logan’s Run" ?

  • jrdjrd

    What's so terrible about telling a 95 year-old that he's welcome to a $250K triple bypass, to give himself another 18 months of life, but he can't reasonably expect society-at-large to pay for it when the health care needs of much younger people aren't being met?

    And there's a point where additional medical care in a fee-for-service model is more cruelty than therapy -- offered not because it makes sense for the patient, but because it's highly profitable.

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