Get Used To Abandonment On Ice Floes

Get Used To Abandonment On Ice Floes

There's a widespread belief that the Eskimo tradition was that when someone got really old, they would be abandoned on an ice floe to die--resources couldn't be spared on those who didn't have long left. This article says that while it was done, it was hardly universal among Eskimo cultures, and was generally reserved for extraordinary famine conditions.

We may be headed back there. I am utterly flabbergasted by this interview from the May 3, 2009 New York Times with President Obama:

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

Well, of course. And if you put this crowd out on an ice floe, metaphorically speaking, they won't be 80% of the total health care bill anymore. They might be 5% of the bill then, because morphine for pain is cheap, and disconnecting life support equipment is cheaper still. But there will be another group that will be 80% of the total health care bill. It won't be the same 80%, of course. Any guess that people dying (expensively) of AIDS won't be part of the crowd that gets put out on Obama's metaphorical ice floe?

Health care is expensive. And yes, I think most people will, if the costs are high enough, say that we have to draw some lines, somewhere. Would we spend a billion dollars to save one person's life? Would we spend a million? What bugs me is that Obama next admits that someone in the government is going to make those choices--and he doesn't want the people to be too deeply involved in making those decisions:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

I'm so glad that we have an adequate supply of philosopher-kings to handle these hard decisions!