Then don't comment. It's not complicated.
> There's lots of articles here on hacker news about how the vast majority of medical expenses come at the end of life and how we do too much to keep people alive against their wishes.
Jesus Christ.
Let me get this straight: you're saying the solution to medical expenses is "let old people die, they don't want to live anyway"?
There are certainly cases where people are kept alive beyond what's compassionate, but that's a pretty separate cultural problem from the situation at hand, which is people who need basic care and can't get it because of capitalism being involved where it shouldn't be.
The reason our society keeps lurching from unthinking outrage to unthinking outrage is that people like you who can't be arsed to read an article and respond on topic keep proposing outrageous changes to our society. If you don't like unthinking outrage, maybe be more thoughtful and stop saying outrageous things.
...which is largely irrelevant, because the state should also not be involved in the conversation about whether pursuing life-extending care is humane.
> I don't think its worth us talking any more since we don't seem to be learning from each other.
Nobody involved in internet disagreements learns from each other typically. I approach internet disagreements with the idea that non-participants reading the disagreement can learn from it. That is, outrageous viewpoints like yours should not go unchallenged because that normalizes them.
If you want to stop representing your viewpoint to readers, you're welcome to, but you can drop the smug superiority about it. If you want conversations to learn and educate, you might start by reading the articles you're responding to.
Americans already use fewer health services than most other industrialized countries, but we still spend way more than anybody else. Will using fewer health services at end of life make a serious dent in health expenditures? Maybe temporarily, but rest assured the hospitals, big pharma, insurance companies and others will raise prices until all those savings are eaten away, and more.
Make no mistake, I am totally for end of life planning, but I believe it is a completely separate question entirely.
When it came out 10 years ago, it answered questions that I'd had for the previous 15 years.
That’s quite an uncharitable take, and plainly not what they meant to express.
And critically, the person I was responding to, responded back to me, and didn't disagree with my interpretation, so...
Startup culture's brand of charitable interpretation glosses over a lot of anarcho-capitalistic sociopathy and I'm not interested in participating in that. Perhaps if you were more interested in actual charitable action such as making sure seniors' medical expenses are paid rather than charitable interpretation, this place would be a bit less toxic.
If you think my interprepation is wrong, feel free to explain, otherwise we can only conclude that it wasn't wrong, and you just don't want to have to defend your indefensible idea.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6610551/
Other interesting articles: https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/details/news.php?id=848
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2014/05/most-physicia...
But that is about what is best for the patient, not what costs less. It is is unconscionable to consider that as a systemic solution to medical costs. Profit motivated sociopaths cannot be given another excuse to deny people needed care. The profit incentives here are to literally murder people. And that can't be fixed, because keeping people alive costs money. The only solution I can see is that money is completely eliminated from the conversation.
The fact is, some people pursue life-extending treatments in cases where it is effective and does result in better outcomes. But from a cost-cutting perspective that's no different. The incentives don't change because the life-extending treatment actually works. If you let money-hungry people near this, they'll still cut the cost.
As I have said elsewhere: the decision to pursue life-extending treatment should be between the patient, their loved ones, and their doctor. Not "society" or government, as some sort of cost-cutting measure. The patient. Their loved ones. Their doctor. No one else.
Let me reiterate: end of life discussions are about patient outcomes. Not about money.
If you want to know why people don't like corporate types, this is it. If you literally can't tear yourself away from your obsession with money to have a human discussion about how to let people die with dignity, you're one of the bad guys.