Eve is here. This article raises important topics not only in society but also in terms of government responsibility. Richard Murphy below describes palliative care for the dying in the UK as inadequate. Hospice care in the United States is theoretically more powerful. From Wikipedia:
Hospice provides medical and social services to patients and their families by a multidisciplinary team of professional health care providers and volunteers who take a patient-driven approach to disease management. Treatment is generally not intended to be diagnostic or curative, but patients may choose several treatment options aimed at prolonging life, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Most hospice services are covered by Medicare or other health care providers, and many hospices can provide access to charitable resources for patients who lack such coverage.
Because of practices primarily prescribed by the U.S. social insurance program, Medicare, and other health insurance providers, in the United States, medically diagnosed patients of any age, regardless of their terminal prognosis, Hospice care is now available to patients. Half a year left to live. In 2007, 1.4 million people in the United States used hospice care. More than a third of dying Americans use this service.
Besides Jimmy Carter, I know two other people who have used hospice care. But it doesn’t seem to be encouraged, at least around my parents, for good reason. My father was terminally ill and was in a very painful and debilitating condition. He kept doctors informed, and they gave him treatments that accelerated his decline. He couldn’t take it anymore and shot himself (and he had a very high pain tolerance). A friend of my mother’s had breast cancer several times and successfully overcame it. In his late 70s, his symptoms returned and his lungs began to fill with fluid. She did not like to be repeatedly intubated and managed to accumulate enough medication (we don’t know if it was painkillers or sleeping pills) to commit suicide. The third patient had a poor prognosis and was admitted to a nursing home, but refused food and medicine.
My father was not referred to hospice care (which can be provided at home), and I’m sure neither of the other two examples above were either. Therefore, there appears to be a gap between the theoretical and practical levels of hospice care in the United States.
Needless to say, these examples also show that a lack of end-of-life care can lead to suicide. So do we want formal assisted dying, or do we want death by the best means readily available?One of my friends, at least my father was a hunter, I joked that I knew how to work. Suicide attempts with guns only have an 85% success rate.. There was also A study of the consequences of a failed suicide attempt by gunshot to the head.. I will omit the details.
Of course, it is natural to worry that the availability of euthanasia will lead to further covert and even overt implementation of Lambert’s second neoliberal principle: “Die!” is. But people are very capable of responding to real or perceived “Die!” put pressure on themselves. So there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer here.
Written by Richard Murphy, Adjunct Professor of Accounting Practice, University of Sheffield Management School, Director of Corporate Accountability Network, Member of Finance for the Future LLP, Director of Tax Research LLP. It was first published in funding the future
it was just a few weeks ago The Telegraph reported:
The current state of end-of-life care in the UK means the country is not ready for assisted dying, Wes Streeting has suggested.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services previously voted in favor of debating the ethics issue “in principle,” but declared he was “conflicted” on the issue.
The House of Commons is now set to take a free vote on the issue, and nothing has changed.
The truth is that hospice care in the UK is woefully inadequate and is not reflective of the charities that seek to provide it. What is absurd is that this is thought to be a problem for charities to deal with.
It is equally true that in-hospital palliative care is underfunded. It may seem as if the British state is willing to invest in us as long as it has the possibility of bringing us back into the workforce, but when the time comes when we inevitably won’t. , no longer cares.
That in itself worries me. If there is no debate about assisted dying, palliative care will require even more investment. People should have the right to die as painlessly and with dignity as possible. When most of us die over a period of time in old age, it seems like a very basic thing for the NHS to do, but it’s not working very well at the moment.
However, there’s more to this than that. There is also no adequate social care scheme for older people, and with Labor abandoning plans to cap some social care costs for older people who require residential care, things are unlikely to progress. Not yet.
Assisted dying is currently being debated. Sorry to be so sarcastic, but I feel relevant, but I don’t like it. There is pressure from some families on older relatives to consider this route when the value of potential inheritances may decline, in some cases significantly. It will take a while. Evidence from other countries suggests that this actually happened. And it’s clearly unhealthy.
For once, Wes Street was right. We may discuss assisted dying for those who wish to consider the option of a dignified natural death when it becomes available. But now, austerity They are denying us that opportunity. That means we can’t afford to take the risks of assisted dying. The necessary checks and balances are not just in medicine. It also means that people facing their own mortality must be offered real alternatives, which the economics of denial currently prevent. Once that’s sorted out, there will be time for this discussion. But we are not there yet.
