MScoleman at aol.com wrote:
> The problem I have with the right to die is that most people want to die
> because the medical community has failed to make them comfortable during their
> chronic diseases. F'rinstance, doctors routinely don't order pain medication
> for elderly people in pain. Why is beyond my comprehension, but they don't.
> If you're going to be in such pain you can't function, you tend to want to
> die. I can understand wanting the ability to pull the plug when you really
> can't function, but alot of people want to die simply because they have been
> failed by doctors who don't give a damn.
>
> maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com
Hi Maggie,
Maybe part of the problem here is that some doctors who prescribe pain medication generously have been called to answer for it by authorities - I seem to recall the case of one man whose doctor was threatened with having his license taken away for prescribing narcotic pain killers over a protracted period of time to a patient who had chronic back pain but I don't have a site for you on this.
But neither doctors nor hospitals really deal with palliative care. Why don't they? I think the elderly have some very similar societal problems to disabled people. Nondisabled and nonelderly would rather turn their heads than face their own mortality or vulnerability. If everyone accepted that they were going to die (or perhaps acquire a disability or both) and really thought about it then the whole society would realize that they wanted to prepare the way for a long term condition or humane exit - pain medication, attentive safe care, comfort, etc. Instead what has happened is perverse. The system stinks so people look at the "right to die" as the way out of a bad situation. It even gets labeled as progressive.
Doctors, like any other profession, have to be forced by public pressure to do what is right. But with the take over of health care by (mis)Managed Care, it is less likely that will happen because of economic incentives. When hospitals and doctors get paid a flat fee (as opposed to for services rendered) in a profit driven health care system, there are incentives to undertreat. Quick death under Managed Care means the end of a nonprofitable patient. No pain medication, patient "voluntarily" choosing to die when what the patient really wants is to get out of an unbearable(for many reasons not just pain) situation, plus the legalization of assisted suicide - bingo - cost is gone.
What we need to do is develop palliative care. It seems that either we will have to destroy Wall Street medicine or the medical industrial complex will need to find a way to make palliative care profitable for it to come about.
Meanwhile be sure that you pick a doctor who believes in relieving pain, there are those out there who do.
Marta Russell