'The Case for Killing Granny' -- a Response

Newsweek has a cover story on end of life health care that it somewhat provocatively entitled "The Case for Killing Granny." The argument of the piece is that we're spending far too much on end of life care and need to cut back.

The piece itself is somewhat more measured in tone than the title "The Case for Killing Granny" suggests. But it does raise an interesting question. Who should determine what kind of and how much end of life care is provided, the patient in consultation with a doctor or government bureaucrats?

The example that the author used to illustrate the problem, that of his mother dying of emphysema, was somewhat misleading. The older woman was not forced to give up her life at the behest of a government bureaucracy that doled out health care on a rationed basis. She concluded that extraordinary life extending procedures were no longer desirable and was duly transferred to a hospice to die with some measure of comfort.

The opposition to Obama-style health care stems from the fear, well-founded, that it would involve massive cut backs in health care, especially for seniors, that would not just entail heroic life extension procedures that only delay the inevitable. It would involve cut backs in procedures that save lives, extend them by years, and improves their quality.

In the kind of socialized health care systems that the Newsweek reporter appears to favor, one if more likely to die of a variety of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and strokes. People wait excessively longer for procedures such as hip replacements, causing unnecessary death and suffering.

The horror stories that the Newsweek author dismisses so casually are horrible because they are true. BigGovHealth is replete with stories of people in countries like Great Britain and Canada being denied life saving health care procedures and drugs simply because the government health care bureaucracy in those countries determined that they should not have them. There are shortages and waits not just for expensive end of life procedures, but for mundane services like fixing a broken arm and knee surgeries.

Serious health care reform would not include calls for "The Case for Killing Granny." The idea of rationing health care is toxic in the United States for the simple reason that it is evil. Serious health care reform would include fostering competition, such as allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, tort reform, and, as Newt Gingrich suggests, stepped up research in finding cures for diseases that are expensive to treat, such as diabetes and alzheimer's.

Even the idea of making "The Case for Killing Granny" seems just a little ghoulish. Questions of life and death should be left up to the individual, not to "death panels" (and that is what they would be, sorry) of government bureaucrats who will determine who will live and who will die.

Sources: The Case for Killing Granny, Evan Thomas, Newsweek, September 12th, 2009

BigGovHealth

A Growth Vision for Health Reform, Newt Gingrich, Wall Street Journal, September 21st, 2009