Bias towards elderly who will not go quietly

[Anonymous]

Kudos to you OP. We don't treat the elderly well or right in this country. It is truly a disgrace.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kudos to you OP. We don't treat the elderly well or right in this country. It is truly a disgrace.

If you compare the care an aged American with good insurance gets, I think it's way more treatment than a senior in a country with a national health type system gets.

[Anonymous]

I'm glad my parents didn't want heroic measures. Part of it was they saw their friends in worse shape decline first, and all the damage from treatments that just made their friends more miserable.

OP, eventually the heroic treatments do more harm than good, and your parents may end up dying sooner than they think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of you can't imagine the trauma of CPR on an 80 year old. It's incredibly violent on the body.

I’m the PP whose friend had to watch her father go through this. She says she’d still make the same choice, and thinks her father would have done the same.

This is what happens when people know the medical system is rife with discrimination. They make rational decisions that they won’t trust the system.

[Anonymous]

Horrible thread title - should be bias against.

And I totally disagree with you. I think American health care goes overboard in interventions and I think heavy interventions in old age are damaging to quality of life and ridiculously expensive for our health care system and society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Horrible thread title - should be bias against.

And I totally disagree with you. I think American health care goes overboard in interventions and I think heavy interventions in old age are damaging to quality of life and ridiculously expensive for our health care system and society.

It’s not “our” health care system. It’s a business. A highly profitable one despite claims of “non-profit” status for some of its elements.

[Anonymous]

Eating ice cream and watching the birds would be fine.

How about being limited to a feeding tube and having your daily activities consisting of being moved to prevent bedsores?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eating ice cream and watching the birds would be fine.

How about being limited to a feeding tube and having your daily activities consisting of being moved to prevent bedsores?

I have known people in that shape and worse who had no interest in dying and were still glad to wake up in the morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of you can't imagine the trauma of CPR on an 80 year old. It's incredibly violent on the body.

I've been to autopsies of patients that I did CPR on. I remember feeling so guilty about the broken ribs at the first one. I'll never forget the pathologist saying, "Look, if you don't break ribs in this context, you aren't pushing hard enough to do CPR."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think in an ideal world doctors could give their all to everyone. The reality is they are understaffed, very overworked and many are burned out. Since they are not superhuman, would you rather a doctor give more attention to a mother or father with children at home, one of whom may have special needs or medical issues or emotional struggles or put all their energy into giving your elderly parent a few more months?

DP, but obviously my parents are more important to me than some random stranger’s kids. Let’s not start moving eugenics-ward, shall we?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on your parents’ side. They still feel there is value in living. No one has the right to overrule them and decide that their life has less significance because of their age. That’s a terribly slippery slope that I think we should be wary about. If someone can determine that old people might not derive sufficient benefit from their life to justify the possible inconvenience to others, what’s to say that’s where the line gets fixed? What about people with serious illnesses, physical disabilities, mental illness, cognitive impairment, chronic disease, addiction, poverty, people who aren’t likable, people who are just different, people whose death can benefit someone else?

Every life is precious. When we start marginalizing lives and trying to decide which are worthy of continuing, all lives are imperiled.

Doctors do this all the time. It’s why when a 75 year old needs a lung transplant they don’t get one - they give it to the younger healthier patient who who will get better/longer use out of it.

You may not like it, and think that everyone will be treated the same, but that’s just not the way it is.

Irrelevant. Transplants are not the same thing as care. Organs are in extreme short supply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My husband is a doctor, other relatives are doctors, and you are entirely wrong, OP. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath. Saving lives is more than a job. It's a calling. If the patient does not have a terminal diagnosis, then it's the standard of care to do everything possible to save their lives and not discuss palliative care until it's needed.

You are shockingly ageist: just because someone is old and frail, with the normal ills of age, does not mean they're ready to be put out to sea on an ice floe. When patients are in terrible pain and death is certain... that's when they ask for a painless exit, and deserve one, at any age. Pain and hopelessness are the criteria, not age.

I hope you're a troll, actually.

I appreciate that your husband and relatives may not have this view but I fully understand the OP’s experience because I am living it also. And, fwiw, I used to work in healthcare (at a local hospital) and I have relatives who are doctors and nurses.

My parent is in his 90s and their specialist was shockingly indifferent to their care. The testing showed a treatable condition at 90 but my parent was never told that nor offered treatment. We found out years later, when it was too late to do anything.

Recently, when my parent was hospitalized, the doctor said the tests weren’t clear as to diagnosis. I asked if there are other tests - and his response was, “What test would you like me to do?” When I asked if there was medicine to help, he asked, “What medicine would you like me to prescribe?” I called the primary doctor and they gave me something to try.

In contrast, my other parent is also in their 90s and has been given treatment and options. They are divorced and in different states.

I think it is very doctor dependent but I do think some doctors write off patients because of age.

I’d be curious to know whether one of your parents is male and one female. Male patients tend to get better treatment than female patients in general, so I wonder how much that aspect may affect the difference in how each parents is treated.

In the situations I was describing, my mother had better treatment than my father. But when it comes to physical therapy, we have had no problem getting my dad physical therapy and were unable to get pt for my mom post-rehab after she broke her hip (although the doctors referred her) because the center said there were young people who need it more.

[Anonymous]

I agree, OP. We did all we could for my now-dead parent. He did not want to die and was not ready to go. He was not eating and the only way to stay in memory care if you are not eating is to be labeled "hospice." Once he was labeled as hospice--but still in his wheelchair and not actively dying--a nurse gave him a lethal dose of morphine before leaving him in a living room at memory care to die. A family member found out and called the ambulance. He was treated with narcan.

So be aware there are nurses out there who do choose to off people. There was a book written about (and a movie made) about one. The nurse who killed my dad is still out there somewhere.

The author of the book is someone I met. He told me that he left a copy of his book (about the murderer nurse) on his mother's nightstand in the hospital. He wanted them to know he knew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The idea that “we” spend money for people’s care is a fiction created to improve insurers’ bottom lines. People spend their own money, or their own benefits, and insurers collect premiums according to their own actuarial tables and experience.

Too many people die, not because they are in intractable misery, but because somebody else feels miserable looking at them. There are few slopes more slippery than “mercy killing.”

Well, this just goes to show you don't know what you're talking about. In the US, Medicare eligibility starts at age 65, and "we" the taxpayers are absolutely paying for all the end-of-life care that prolongs life for a very short time at best. One-quarter of all Medicare spending goes to care in the last year of life.

Also, there are a lot more rumors about mercy killings than there are actual mercy killings. It's really, really hard to die voluntarily with medical assistance in this country, and medical professionals are far too worried about *murder charges* to go around giving *controlled substances* out like candy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The idea that “we” spend money for people’s care is a fiction created to improve insurers’ bottom lines. People spend their own money, or their own benefits, and insurers collect premiums according to their own actuarial tables and experience.

Too many people die, not because they are in intractable misery, but because somebody else feels miserable looking at them. There are few slopes more slippery than “mercy killing.”

Well, this just goes to show you don't know what you're talking about. In the US, Medicare eligibility starts at age 65, and "we" the taxpayers are absolutely paying for all the end-of-life care that prolongs life for a very short time at best. One-quarter of all Medicare spending goes to care in the last year of life.

Also, there are a lot more rumors about mercy killings than there are actual mercy killings. It's really, really hard to die voluntarily with medical assistance in this country, and medical professionals are far too worried about *murder charges* to go around giving *controlled substances* out like candy.

Less than half of Medicare spending comes from general revenues, and if you really believe that there’s even a vague semblance of a connection between that and what “we” pay in taxes, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona that might interest you.

And as multiple PP’s early death does not have to come from “mercy killing.” Simple neglect/physician is sufficient.