Why is it accepted to euthanize your pets once they get old, but wrong to do so with sick and dying people?

No, I just think that your point was flawed and didn't follow past the point of being a dig at the price of drugs.

'Costly to the taxpayer, slightly maybe... Hugely profitable to medical and pharmaceutical manufacturers' 18% of tax revenue in the UK goes on health spending, I'd call that more than 'slightly maybe'

I don't understand exactly how the fact that someone is providing us with an expensive semi-effective solution to something is the reason why we all lap it up. Especially when it comes to it being from tax payers money. Govts only have so much cash to spend, they want to minimize the expenditure on anything which doesn't have a viable return, in the UK NICE were (until they lost their powers to veto medicines being available on the NHS back in 2010 at least) doing some major work in deciding how valuable a treatment really was.

I think that actually money works in the opposite way to which you originally suggested (at least in the UK and in Canada), people have pets which they pay out of pocket for treatment, as part of an emotional decision, therefore it is far more price elastic than a treatment which is dictated by government officials in a boardroom.

I believe that the idea of money in this argument actually goes the way of... 'because it feels essentially free to keep a human alive' - whilst remaining within the allowances of treatments. If we realized the actual cost of keeping someone alive, we may choose differently.

To clarify on potential confusion, my point mainly rotates around the issue of end of life care. Costs which wouldn't be paid for humans are things like 6 months of extension in a terminal oncology patient. Costs which would be covered are first line treatment in an 80 year old patient who if the cost was out of pocket may give extra thought to whether they'd had a good life, and maybe didn't need the agony of 12 months of chemotherapy for another 5 years of life, if they also had to pay the $100,000 themselves.

Perhaps it's a difference in culture which leads us to have significantly opposing perspectives. However no, you didn't hit a nerve, you just said something which I feel reasonably well read on, and vehemently disagreed with. Throwing in the pharmaceutical industry at the end felt like an irrelevant addition to the point (akin at least in my mind to: Qu. Why do so many people fly routes they can drive? Ans. Because planes are expensive to buy initially).

Hopefully in some way, that explains my initial response past a touched nerve.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent