The Off Topic Topic

[Ideologue]

Stop spending money on dying people.

Concur wholeheartedly.

[Zanza]

Stop spending money on dying people.

How do you tell they are in the last six months of their life?

[Zoupa]

Stop spending money on dying people.

How do you tell they are in the last six months of their life?

Bingo.

[Admiral Yi]

How do you tell they are in the last six months of their life?

That's the job of the death panel.

[Zoupa]

This discussion is frankly hilarious 

Oh amerikkka. Don't ever change. 

[CountDeMoney]

This discussion is frankly hilarious 

Oh amerikkka. Don't ever change. 

I'm all for allowing individuals to indulge in what Nietzche called the great solace in determining their own end, without the meddling of hospitals, lawyers and family.

Christ, people's pets have more end-of-life choices than they give their parents.

[Zoupa]

What's this shit about choices? Folks already have a choice, it's called a DNR. You do realise that this is just another way of fucking with the poor right?

[CountDeMoney]

What's this shit about choices? Folks already have a choice, it's called a DNR. You do realise that this is just another way of fucking with the poor right?

While there are industries that have skin in the game to see you last as long as possible while the meter runs, I don't think as much as it is fucking with the poor (because it's not just the poor that's fucked) as it is an institutional mindset of the medical profession, which sincerely believes that it is pursuing a science and not a practice.  It honestly believes that quality of life is not nearly as important as extending life as long as possible, as every dying patient that lasts an extra day is just another clinical palette to measure, follow and record for case studies.

[DGuller]

Stop spending money on dying people.

How do you tell they are in the last six months of their life?

Empirically.  When someone needs medical care, it should be withheld for 6 months.  If the patient is still alive, then obviously he's not just a parasite who's near death and is sucking up all medical resources.

[Josquius]

I've put my kerosene heater on for the first time.
I get warm AND high. Its win-win!

[Syt]

Bespin, Cloud City. A surveillance room. Darth Vader, Imperial Officer.

Officer

    A pestilence on him for a mad droid! He poured a
    bottle of wine on my head once. This same skull,
    Mylord, was C-3PO's skull, your old protocol droid.

VADER

    This?

Officer

    E'en that.

VADER

    Let me see.

    Takes the skull
    Alas, poor 3PO! I knew him, Commander: a droid
    of six million forms of communication, of most excellent fancy:
    I've re-assembled him a thousand times; and now, how
    abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
    it. Here are those wires that I have fixed I know
    not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
    gambols? your complaints? your flashes of sarcasm,
    that were wont to set the table rolling their eyes? Not one
    now, to mock you?

[Admiral Yi]

What's this shit about choices? Folks already have a choice, it's called a DNR. You do realise that this is just another way of fucking with the poor right?

What do other countries do?  Do they spend beelions of dollars extending someone's life by a couple weeks?

[CountDeMoney]

What's this shit about choices? Folks already have a choice, it's called a DNR. You do realise that this is just another way of fucking with the poor right?

What do other countries do?  Do they spend beelions of dollars extending someone's life by a couple weeks?

Yes, but they don't ever see the bill.  It comes with the citizenship.

[Admiral Yi]

Yes, but they don't ever see the bill.  It comes with the citizenship.

Neither does our hypothetical carousel candidate.

Not having spent months in foreign ICUs, I don't really know what the common practice is in the rest of the world.  But I have a hunch that it involves fewer heroic measures.

[Ideologue]

How do you tell they are in the last six months of their life?

That's the job of the death panel.

I don't get it, did Zoupa want to fuck Terri Shiavo or something?