Is it time access to free NHS care was age limited?

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

westernpromise wrote: »

Apparently in the book it was 21.

Which raises an interesting question. Once ruperts gets his way and people over 75 are just allowed to die off, what stops a cost cutting government lowering that to 50? Or introducing a minimum age of, say, 5? Average life expectancy in the past was lower because of child mortality. If you made it to 5 you had a good chance to make it to 75. But these parasitical little toddlers of 2 and 3 years old have never paid a penny in taxes in their lives, the leeches. So why not say the NHS is for those aged between 16 and 50 who can produce a current payslip?

Because by age 85 if you're unhealthy and dying you've already had the opportunity to enjoy life. If you can fund your own private health care at this age then go for it.


I've already told my wife to let me die graciously in old age. I don't want to burden her if I'm deificating all over myself and I'm house bound, don't be forcing chemotherapy onto me or force my withered body onto a life support machine. Too many people are scared of death and think being alive at all costs is the ultimate goal.

kabayiri

We will be in a position pretty soon where we can fit medical devices inside people to provide more or less real time monitoring.

We know about the health of our cars than the health of some of our elderly.

This presents the same age old question, because we CAN do something SHOULD we do it?

Should intervention be replaced by paliative care at some point? The more we know about somebody's immediate health, the more informed we are, but it doesn't make the decision any easier.

This isn't really an age thing. The same questions arise on people in dire medical situations regardless of age.

Half of me says help the immediate family all come and spend some final quality days with someone who is terminal.

always_sunny

kabayiri wrote: »

We will be in a position pretty soon where we can fit medical devices inside people to provide more or less real time monitoring.

Is that going to happen before or after folks come to terms with ID Cards?
As soon as you mention "devices" and "monitoring" they will be afraid that their benefits might be cut for the half a day they have no symptoms! :rotfl:

kabayiri

always_sunny wrote: »

Is that going to happen before or after folks come to terms with ID Cards?
As soon as you mention "devices" and "monitoring" they will be afraid that their benefits might be cut for the half a day they have no symptoms! :rotfl:

It's happening. Maybe not here, but it's happening.

Via a sibling I am in touch with a lot of meditech development in California.

There's a device which reads the tear duct fluid coming soon which provides a whole set of real time measurements. The primary chip which does all the basic work is less than 3mm square. You try figuring out where that could be hidden...

There are millions of people in Africa and Asia desperate for affordable health monitoring. It's a massive potential market.

bugslet

Sapphire wrote: »

I don't think any relative could be expected to make decisions to (in effect) murder someone in such cases, and I think few people affected by the disease in the early stages would agree to being killed when their symptoms become much worse.

The letter I referred to in my earlier post pretty much demanding that they stop the sub cuts for Mr Bugs, was in effect a request to let him die. If they hadn't have stopped I was fully prepared to spend 24 hours with him day after day, physically stopping anyone from further 'treatment'. There's something uniquely disgusting about watching a nurse trying to find enough body fat on a man weighing 5.5 stone, to insert a needle.

Having seen Mr Bugs, yep let someone medical determine a point at which there's no point, no quality and let me go.

BobQ

rtho782 wrote: »

People in retirement age now earn on average more than those of working age.

The least we could do is expect them to pay the same rate into the pot. e.g. merge Income Tax and NI.

No reason pensioners should get tax breaks.

I think there is a case for paying fot the full cost of the NHS from general taxation. But I fail to see why retired people should pay NI when they either cannot claim the benefits (JSA etc) or have already contributed to the benefits they receive (the state pension).

There maybe a case for NI payments by those who retire earler than state retirement age but in that case they qualify for more state pension.

Also, were I a young person I would want those near retirement age with a private pension to retire early in order to fee up employment opportunities for me. One of the effects of raising the state retirement age is that those who get a pension at 60 are choosing to carry on working removing employment opportunities from those younger than them.

Sapphire

bugslet wrote: »

The letter I referred to in my earlier post pretty much demanding that they stop the sub cuts for Mr Bugs, was in effect a request to let him die. If they hadn't have stopped I was fully prepared to spend 24 hours with him day after day, physically stopping anyone from further 'treatment'. There's something uniquely disgusting about watching a nurse trying to find enough body fat on a man weighing 5.5 stone, to insert a needle.

Having seen Mr Bugs, yep let someone medical determine a point at which there's no point, no quality and let me go.

You're talking about someone who is seriously ill here, and who is obviously failing and suffering badly – in such cases, treatment is withheld by medical staff. I have seen this happen in one case in my family, where there was simply no hope of the person improving. The family were consulted about this.

But that's quite different from murdering someone by withholding treatment that can actually help them to still enjoy life. My grandmother was nearly 100 when she died, after having led a life that was useful and productive to society. She was quite fit, not unhappy, didn't have dementia, could hold conversations and even read a lot until a couple of years before she died. There's no way someone like that should be murdered – and there's no way my family would ever condone such a thing towards someone who was a valued family member.

Think some people, like the provocative OP, are hoping to regress to something like the Georgian period, two centuries ago, when children and adults were actually living and dying in the streets of London, the health of the population having improved to the extent that many more people were being born than were dying, causing massive overpopulation (despite the diseases that were still prevalent at the time, though no more plagues)…

zagubov

The idea that we are all equally qualified to decide who should regulate the resources given to certain life stages needs serious examination.
Are men always the best judge of how much we should resource cervical or breast cancer? Should they have a deciding vote?
Are women always the best judge of how much we should resource prostate or testicular cancer?

And are my questions that very much different from the OPs?

Rich2808

Surely if any group is denied free NHS care it should be those aged 18 to 50 - less likely to get ill and private health care is more affordable. Then when you retire the state steps in - as in the US - as the costs of private insurance post 70 are prohibitive.

Maybe we need to stop treating the NHS like s religion - and find ways to preserve it.

Sapphire

In passing, the ugly thing for me about all this is the question of money (something that's really raised its head in recent years). It appears that many offspring are willing relatives to die so a house (and other assets, generally built up through hard slog over many years by the deceased) will conveniently drop in front of them, without them having to lift a finger to earn it.

Unfortunately, I've seen such an attitude even in my own family and that of at least one other person I know, where the offspring don't bother to work, sit at home or are on permanent gap years through into their thirties. It's not good for any generation, and it creates weak and unambitious individuals in the offspring.