Let's Just Make More Chemo

A reader is way off the mark in understanding that medical care is not an unlimited resource. Everything costs money. Some may believe health care is a right, but choose to put no economic limitations on those rights, because it's well, a right. And you can't place a limitation on a right. Right?

I argued in this post that we should not be giving chemo to a 92 year old with metastatic breast cancer, and at the same time almost always deny a liver transplant to patients over the age of 70. The reader suggests that liver transplants are in short supply. As for the chemo? Well, read on...

FInnToday 11:35 AM

Your argument compares apples to oranges. We don't offer liver transplants to those 70+ but do offer chemo to those 90+ because the latter, unlike the former, does not preclude our ability to do the same for someone else. We have a very limited number of organs available for transplantation but can manufacture as much chemo as we need. Transplantation involves major surgery; port implantation is minor surgery. Transplant patients must take immune-suppressing drugs and face heightened risk of infection for the rest of their lives, but we have no way of knowing in advance whether the chemo patient will suffer mild or severe immune suppression (which can be treated) or other side effects. And you can claim that the 92-year-old isn't going to respond to chemo the same way as a 57-year-old but this is a guess based on assumption, not science; as you point out elsewhere (but ignore when it doesn't support your argument), the studies have not been done.

I"m sorry to burst your bubble Flnn. The reason our country is 85 trillion dollars in the hole in unfunded mandates is because people like you believe we can just "manufacture as much chemo as we need"

Let me ask you one question. If the solution to ending poverty as we know it was simply "to print as much money as we need.", why don't we just give all the poor people a million dollars in cash. Wouldn't that solve the poor problem as you see it with the chemo issue?

Of course, the reason we don't do that (at least not to that degree, yet), is that everything costs money. And someone is going to pay for it. Whether it's you or your neighbor, promising as much chemo as we need costs money. And we simply don't have the money to promise chemo to everyone, or to print a million dollars for every poor person in this country.

Your entitlement mentality is part of the problem. Perhaps the only thing you have a right to is to thank the Lord you make it to 92 years old in one piece.