care economist

im not sure if i mentioned it here to you guys, but a couple of weeks ago i posted the following in response to a georgia10 piece:
"perhaps the dems can use the terri schiavo case to push the case for universal healthcare by focusing on the joint issues of the right to dignity and the total costs (health & legal & others) of keeping her alive.

surveys indicate that many people (i think i read somewhere 80+%) want the right to die with some dignity, and many of us dont want to suffer the ignominy that terri schiavo has been through.

the medical costs of keeping americans who are in a 'persistent vegetative state' alive for 15 years (in this case) is presumably well into the 7 figures. on top of that you can add the total legal costs and other economic and non-economic costs.

i dont know how many americans there are in a 'persistent vegetative state', but if we find that number and then multiply through the total cost, and then multiply that by the % of us who would prefer to be allowed to die then the total savings might go some ways to financing universal health care.

as a starting point, according to this article, for example, there are 40,000 americans in a 'persistent vegetative state' and 2/3rds of americans 'would rather die a little sooner'.

the dems could use the schiavo case to promote that they respect the dignity of the individual et al and promote the idea of the living will, and then use the projected savings to pay, in part, for universal health care.

im sure the math has already been conducted for the Texas Futile Care Law, for example.

and perhaps the dems could reclaim the compassionate label juxtaposed against the purported 'compassionate conservatives' aka the radical, fanatical, corrupt extremists of which you speak."

today we read this in the Chigtrib:
"Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University, said that taking extraordinary means to extend life for elderly Americans will prove extremely costly as Baby Boomers retire. He said Congress is not considering the tradeoffs of spending so much on prolonging life under Medicare and Medicaid.

If some of that money were used to extend health care to all children, he said, Congress could lengthen the lives of many young people who might otherwise die prematurely, obtaining more years of life per dollar."