Well gee. It sounds like you're proposing a government endorsed euthanasia program. Pretty creepy....

Let's take this line of argument further. If we decide that people in their 90's don't deserve medical funds because they are "too old" and that other "younger" people could benefit from the funds more, won't the next logical step be to start denying treatment based on a cost-benefit basis for all ages? Why stop at people over 90? If we have a particularly poor economy, let's slip that number down to 80 until the economy picks up? How about cutting off those pesky cancer patients with a low survival probability? Who needs them allyway?

What I'd like to know is who would get to make this sort of decision? That person will effectively be carrying a hangman's noose in his/her briefcase. Doesn't sound like a fun job...But hey, if we toss out Mrs. Jones, think about how much money we'll be saving tax payers, right?

Sorry Grandma Greatest Generation, time to pull the plug!

It'll be interesting to see what you think about this when you're in your 90's....

"What I'd like to know is who would get to make this sort of decision? That person will effectively be carrying a hangman's noose in his/her briefcase. Doesn't sound like a fun job...But hey, if we toss out Mrs. Jones, think about how much money we'll be saving tax payers, right?"

The sad thing is that insurance companies' paper pushers make these decisions every day. They actively deny claims in order to save the insurance company from paying out. One company's strategy was to deny deny deny care for breast cancer patients (and other cancers) until they simply died off.

It's already happening, it's just not the gov't making the decisions, and they're doing it to people much younger than 90.

I agree that if Saletan were 90, or if he had a healthy grandma who was 90 and needed a pacemaker, his thinking might be a little different.

"But hey, if we toss out Mrs. Jones, think about how much money we'll be saving people whose only interest in Mrs. Jones is preserving the right to call on tax money to save their own beloved elderly, right?"

Puts a whole new spin on it, doesn't it?

I know that I'm going to be labeled a hypocrite for this, but tax money should be spent from more of an investment position, than a consumptive one. Helping my grandmother, for instance make it from 100 to 101 might make me feel really good that I didn't have to cough up the cash myself, but it's not going to put anything back into the society in and of itself. If it's important to me that she live a year longer, then I should be ready to pay the costs it entails.

Life extention for the very elderly might be a laudable idea, but it can also be a form of conspicuous consumption - "Look how much money we can spend on keeping the nonproductive alive!" (And yes, that goes for your terminal cancer patients, as well.)

Someone else refusing to foot that bill is no more euthanasia than not having a world-class trauma center in the middle of a sparsely populated area - will people die because they were too far away from life-saving treatment? Yes. If that's euthanasia, then not having a fully-stocked hospital in every single township in the nation constitutes mass murder on an epic scale.

Anyone being asked to foot the bill SHOULD be allowed to perform a cost-benefit analysis for the funds they are beign asked to spend, if for no other reason than funds are limited. We could easily spend every dime of public money in the country funding medical treatment that would bring slight improvements to people's lives - they fact that we don't means that we're already making decisions about where money is going to go, and where it isn't.

You play the hypocrite card too easily. Just because you feel that it is a "natural" human desire to want others to pay for keeping our loved ones alive when we cannot afford it ourselves doesn't mean that anyone who says differently is lying, or out of touch with themselves.

While Mr. Saletan may be just as attached to his parents or grandparents as the rest of us are supposed to be, that doesn't mean that he understands the resposibility to extend their lives as far as they can go rests on the public, rather than himself, other people who care about them (or would feel a loss when they died) or the elderly themselves.

Ultimately the question that needs to be asked is, "How many people will die so that we can save this 100 year old?"

If that number is 1 or less than one (possible with these sorts of things), then our cost benefit analysis says this is a good idea.

If instead the math says the money spent saying that 100 year old *could* have paid for 10,000 children to be vaccinated and statistically speaking, 20 of them will die because they weren't... then our cost benefit analysis says this wasn't a good idea.

And yes, *someone* is going to have to explain to the 100 year old's family that we're not going to save her, but the alternative is *someone* explaining to the families of those 20 children that we didn't have them.

Like it or not we have limited resources and can't save everyone.

I like the point brought up about health insurance already making such llife/death decision - first because it's true, and second because of the irony in that fact. At least with public funding you could argue that it's not always fair to have to foot the bill for someone elses healthcare needs or to take funding away from those that could benefit most from the investment. In the case of health insurance, it's actually a product you are PAYING FOR that should benefit you directly....how strange that the private product is inferior to the public one...

The argument for why government should stay out of healthcare is that private sector is more apt at being cost-effective and provides a better service. But based on the kind of public treatment the elderly get, plus the shortcomings and exploitations of private insurance companies, one starts to wonder if the opposite is true. At the end of the day, we all require medical attention just as we need a cohesive military for defense. We don't have any problems with a publicly funded army that doesn't necessarily benfit us directly, especiallly wars that profit big corporations.

Doesn't it leave a bitter taste in your mouth when talking about investment and cost-benefit analysis when you see how much money is being wasted in Iraq. You or I will never directly benefit from this policy. Perhaps that money could be appropriated to build and pay for all those rural hospitols and keep them well stocked. That would be something that we could all use at least....

I say lets trade in our bombs for grandmas and then we won't be faced with this moral dilemna.

Herein lies at least part of the problem with any socialized medicine program. Do you lose a part of your citizenship just because you reached age 99? If Medicare or Medicaid is supposed to be available to all above a given age, then it doesn't have a do-not-exceed date. That doesn't seem fair, doesit?

If, on the other hand, you take the entire business away from the government, that means the rich live longer -- that doesn't seem fair either, does it?

If it is available to all citizens, there can't be any reason for rationing based on age -- age doesn't make you less of a citizen, or less of a person. Such rationing would indeed be one step down the slope that leads to euthanasia.

... Does either citizenship or "personhood" carry with it an entitlement to any and all medical treatments that may (or may not) extend your life, at the financial burden of others?

I don't know that I subscribe to a definition of "fairness" that, in all honesty, seems to call for a world in which the lives of any two people are virtually indistinguishable from one another, and are, at least to degree, impervious to attempts by said individuals to change them (or others).

Lyger:

"But hey, if we toss out Mrs. Jones, think about how much money we'll be saving people whose only interest in Mrs. Jones is preserving the right to call on tax money to save their own beloved elderly, right?"Life extention for the very elderly might be a laudable idea, but it can also be a form of conspicuous consumption - "Look how much money we can spend on keeping the nonproductive alive!" (And yes, that goes for your terminal cancer patients, as well.)

I really don't understand why people continue to contend that the elderly are calling on tax money. The majority of the elderly are covered by Medicare not Medicaid unless they are in a nursing home and have exhausted all of their capital.

Medicare is an insurance that all productive citizens pay based on our income. When we retire we continue to pay benefits that are deducted from our social security checks (another item that we paid for based on our incomes) on a monthly basis. Most elderly also have supplemental insurance because they can't afford not to since they would go broke if they only had Medicare. Most of them were productive all their lives and are only now able to reap the benefits of the dollars that they spent for just that reason.

Why don't we get into those people who have never worked a day in their lives even though they are perfectly capable of getting off of their asses and getting a job. They have never contributed to the public coffers yet they and their families take from them for everything that they have. The home they live in, the food they eat, the clothing on their back, the excellent medical care that they get on Medicaid. And then the cycle continues when their children follow the same course because that is how they were brought up and now expect to live their lives the same way. Why should they work for what they want when it has always been handed to them. But then we must continue to do that because it is our responsibility to take care of the children that they have even though they can't afford themselves much less the responsibility of someone else. Look how much money we spend keeping the lifelong non-productive alive. So why is it alright to continue to spend all that money on these people but the elderly should just realize that their time is up and go away quietly?

donamp: Believe that Medicare is insurance if you like, but you're being sold a bill of goods. Social Security is said to be insurance too, but try to find the terms of your policy. You won't, because that policy can be changed at the whim of Congress.

Originally Social Security was explained a insurance, and the income from it could not be taxed. Now, the income form it is taxed and the benefits have been reduced.

At this point we haven't started reducing Medicare benefits, but it is financed by the same taxes as Social Security. Like Social Security, it is a government entitlement given to people over a given age. What we're really discussing here is whether or not it is OK to cut off that benefit because someone has achieved a specific higher age. If it were an insurance company that cut off your already-paid-for insurance for this reason, you could sue unless such a cutoff was a provision of your policy. When its the government, well, go ahead and try suing. If you're in your 30s and start now, you might outlive the court cases before you lose in your late 90s.

trapdoor - Not to belabor a point but Social Security is actually only taxed if you make more than a specific amount in a year which most elderly people don't. And it is not the full amount but half of it that is taxed.

I agree with you that the discussion should be about whether or not it should be cut at a specific age or not. The point I was getting at was where people specified that it was public monies being doled out to the elderly which it really isn't. These people have made their contributions to society and continue to pay for the Medicare that they receive even when they are retired.

Donamp: It doesn't matter to me, by the way, that Social Security is only slightly taxed for some people -- as originally sold to the American public it was to never be taxed at all.

You're in error about the specified public money. Your FICA taxes don't go into a specific retirement or insurance account with your name on it -- that would be insurance. If you are working today, yourself, you are paying for the Medicare and Social Security benefits of those receiving it today. When you retire, the people who are working will be paying for whatever benefits you receive from these coffers.

These people have made their contributions to society and continue to pay for the Medicare that they receive even when they are retired.

This is a moral argument pretending to be a fiscal one. Yes, they paid taxes ear marked for Medicare (or Social Security), but those taxes were spent long ago.

Social Security was set up to assist the elderly when they retired. The elderly continue to pay premiums on a monthly basis for Medicare.

To blame the elderly and now the baby boomers who are coming to age for what is wrong with the Social Security System and Medicare System is pure bull. To blame them because the Medicare system is strained is bull. If the government would have kept their hands off of Social Security and Medicare and only used it for what it was earmarked for we wouldn't have this problem. If they would have replaced the money that they took, we wouldn't have this problem. If they would quit sending billions of dollars to countries that laugh in our face we wouldn't have this problem.

Sure due to medical research some people are living longer than anticipated but the main reason that the Social Security and Medicare System are in trouble is because of the mishandling by the Government.

trapdoor: I never said that they went into a specific account with the individuals name on it. The only reason that we are paying for those receiving it today is because the government mishandled it by borrowing from it and never repaying it. If the government wouldn't have mishandled it we wouldn't be having these problems.