Health Dare Reform

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/08/04/dying/index.html

First Joe Biden says it is patriotic to pay taxes. Now, apparently, it is patriotic to die early, or at least before one encumbers the general public by needing medical care beyond a red or blue pill.

The piece if you don't care to sully your computer with reading Salon, discusses how as Americans, we don't accept death, we fight it. Gosh, I never knew this was strictly a U.S.A. type sentiment, but let's just let that slide.

Anne Moore's piece explains that we could as a country, save millions if we would just allow death to occur like we did in the good old days. She fondly remembers all the fun wakes she attended and how healthy they were. In the good old days, those who loved the person or felt obligated, gathered to toast the person's life and reflect on his or her meaning in their lives. This still happens regardless of whether one used tubes and an ICU prior to passing or not, but it happened after death.

Now, we should gather, throw a huge blow out and kiss the relatives at the door of the hospital good bye forever. It sounds so soothing, so reasonable, to go into a cocoon room where everyone could hang out and take pictures and then die.
It would be selfless to die and more sensible, no pain, no mess, just hold a big party to kiss your loved ones good-bye and then off to that good night. The problem is, that's not what happened in her romantic childhood, nor is that what she's advocating here. She romantically attaches what people did after those they loved died, to what people should now do in the present pre-mortum.

I bet the government could encourage such behavior by waving the death taxes that normally come on one's estate upon demise when such heroic selfless action is done with full proper documentation and witnesses.

This is the same psuedo compassion that encourages abortion to be considered merely an unpleasant episode, rather than a grave evil act.

People don't know even when they receive a bad diagnosis about their health when they will die, and as such, all that they do up until that moment, amounts to part of who they are. Their sufferings and difficulties also reveal how well we love as a society.

We have the freedom to face death or not at this moment in our country as we will, with the tenacity and courage to hold on or with the equal quiet grace of endurance unto death. What we should not be in the business of doing as a nation or individuals, is asking people to "hurry it up" out of fear of suffering, nor should we be in the business of telling people who wish to go on, that such actions would be selfish because of cost.

If I were a boomer staring down the beginnings of old age, I'd feel very queasy about this mind set becoming the expected norm. Because I love people who have come before me, I find this way of thinking disturbing. There have been countless nations before this one that used the need to decrease the surplus population as an excuse to kill millions. The problems of a society of how to deal with elderly, the young, the handicapped and the poor have all been "solved" by death in the past. This is just the latest modern version of justification for killing.

So to those who offer this snake oil in the name of all that is good for the country, offering the simplicity of a red or blue pill rather than extended medical care, here are the red and blue pills. If you think it is so good for the country to die before medical care is needed, you go first.