What’s health got to do with it?
It all boils down to this, says James Pinkerton:
Is medicine a life-saving endeavor? Is it the art of healing, combined with the science of life? Or is it a statistical exercise — just an offshoot of utilitarian economics, the most dismal branch of the dismal science? If it’s the former, then medicine should be celebrated. If it’s the latter, then “healthcare,” a concept borrowed mostly from social science, should dethrone medicine and all [its] lore, and we should all die at the most economically opportune time. The choice is ours. Unless, of course, Washington-based bean-counters make the choice for us.
Which is, I need hardly point out, the goal of all bean-counters, in Washington or anywhere else.
And this particular slope is notable for both its steepness and for its coefficient of friction, or lack thereof:
From a “numbers” point of view, it makes little or no sense to preserve the life of a 90-year-old in a coma. But history suggests that if we concede that it doesn’t make sense to protect the lives of the senescent elderly, then we soon find ourselves slippery-sloping our way to the point where “experts” assert that it’s not worth doing too much to save the life of a one-year-old, or a 30-year-old.
Let it be said that I don’t give a flying fish who pays the salaries of those experts, be it Washington’s Department of Damn Near Everything or Wicked Conglomerate, LLC; this sort of decision is, by definition, above their pay grade.
(Suggested by Amba.)
