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Comment by smgit | Hacker News Reader

They will die natural deaths much earlier and peacefully without all kinds of mental/physical decline if beyond retirement age, they just stop taking any medication.

Especially if they have no plan to do anything other than prolong their own lives for no reason.

I can understand seniors who are active and have something going on in their lives. But if you spend time around hospitals/pharmacies the number of seniors who have nothing going on other than making hospital/pharmacy visits is ridiculous. Its like they are kept alive cause docs and pharma companies can keep them alive. Not for any other reason.

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> But if you spend time around hospitals/pharmacies the number of seniors who have nothing going on other than making hospital/pharmacy visits is ridiculous.

Who are you to say this, genuinely? If a person wants to refuse treatment, they are able to even if it would be fatal to them. If a person feels their life is still worth living, who are you to judge that and advocate for making the choice for them? I only bristle because this is also the logic to assume people who are severely disabled are better off dead without ever consulting them (a fact constantly fought against by severely disabled advocates like Alice Wong).

I agree but there is also a pretty large subset of that elderly population that is like "I want to die. Please let me die" and then the nurse is like "ok sure Alice now take your pills"

> the number of seniors who have nothing going on other than making hospital/pharmacy visits is ridiculous

As someone who is part way down this slope, let me tell you: it's not like you're fine, you're fine, you're fine...BOOM! you spend your life going to the doctor. Instead, it starts with "I go to the doctor every few years because I remember to," to "I have this one thing that requires me to check in annually," to "I have to double-check the pills I'm taking in the morning to make sure I'm taking all the right ones," to "It seems like I always have 1-3 doctor appointments pending," to, I'm assuming, what you're describing.

That makes it harder to pick the point where you should step onto the ice floe and wave good-bye to your family.

You don’t have to have “something going on” for your life to be worth living or have value

Yes, antibiotics might be cheap but the cost is enormous.

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