Healthcare

Rationing: The New Healthcare App

In July, the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the world’s leading oncology association, announced the development of a new mobile app for cancer patients. This app is not intended to ease people through the treatment process, but to create a standardized way of limiting patients’ access to innovative treatments based on costs rather than benefits to the patient. Being sick is costly. However, being alive is also costly—even funerals are costly—but when did it become acceptable...

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Advance Directives: Patient Beware

Most people think advance health care directives and living wills are understandable, ironclad and followed to the letter. Many believe the purpose is simply to help health care providers carry out a patient’s wishes of how they want to be treated if they become unable to speak for themselves. In reality, such documents are often confusing, unclear, or outright ignored. Sadly, they can provide a vehicle that neatly fits in with the growing culture of death, which increasingly believes that...

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Futile Care Vs Palliative Care

Ethics Committees and Futile Care Futile Care Theory: Bioethicists Should Stop Pretending They Are Doing Patients a Favor Sunday, May 30, 2010, 5:49 PM Wesley J. Smith Allowing people to make their own informed decisions regarding the extent of end-of-life medical treatment is crucial to respecting all people as persons. Indeed, that view was first promoted by the late great Paul Ramsey, the Christian theologian/bioethicist, in his pioneering lectures and subsequent book, The Patient as a...

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Rationing Healthcare

The New York Times begins to soften us for health care rationing. "Eventually, we may well have to decide against paying for expensive treatments with only modest benefits. But given how difficult that would be for this country, it makes sense to start with the easier situations — the ones in which “no” really is the best answer for patients. " Ever heard of a QALY? Quality Adjusted Life Years is a mechanism for rationing health care.  Obamacare provides a "panel" to decide on the treatments...

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Assisted Suicide

Assisted suicide and euthanasia is a confusing subject. However, this subject will greatly affect future generations as we continue the slide down the slippery slope. Please carefully consider all factors before making a judgment. The following are a list of questions that many have asked on this subject and answers that address these provocative questions. 1. ISN'T A DECISION TO KILL ONESELF A PRIVATE CHOICE ABOUT WHICH SOCIETY HAS NO RIGHT TO BE CONCERNED? This position assumes that suicide...

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Post Abortion Syndrome

Post Abortion Stress Syndrome (PAS) affects everyone and is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. The process of making an abortion choice, experiencing the procedure and living with the grief, pain and regret is certainly, at it’s very core, traumatic. As with any trauma, individuals often try to “forget” the ordeal and deny or ignore any pain that may result.

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