I didn't know I was helping reduce the costs of health care...

[ernunnos]

...By promoting atheism.

Religious Belief Linked to Desire for Aggressive Treatment in Terminal Patients

Terminally ill cancer patients who drew comfort from religion were far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care in the week before they died than were less religious patients and far more likely to want doctors to do everything

Comments

[kimatha]

Wow.

My first thought was to think that they're afraid they're going to hell.

[a_motley_fool]

I think non religious people are more likely to look at the logic of the situation.

I'm an atheist, I don't believe in miracles. If I get cancer the likelihood for my survival is very low and I know that god isn't going to intervene on my behalf (I know everyone knows someone who survived for seemly no reason. The truth is, the doctor who diagnosed the problem was probably wrong about what it was, how severe it was and hey, even a cancer with a 1% survival rate has that 1% out there making everyone else feel that they have a chance).

[slawson01]

Simple beheadings could decrease the cancer mortality rate to near zero.

Even if you beat cancer once, in order to be a cancer survivor you've gotta die from something else before you get it again and it kills you.

[slawson01]

And medicare is mandatory. You can have supplimental insurance to cover your co-payments, but you can't opt out of having medicare pay once you are of retirement age.

Of course the way it is stated Medicare, the government’s health plan for the elderly, spends about one-third of its budget on people who are in the last year of life, and much of that on patients at the very end of life. can be taken to mean something other than what is actually true. For example a car load of teen agers here was killed over the weekend by a drunk driver and I would imagine that the bulk of their medical expenses were ammassed near the very end of their lives.

[ersigh]

“To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,” Dr. Prigerson said, “and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”

I call bullshit. Maybe there are a few that this is true but I think that it's more likely to be a fear thing for a decent percentage of people. It's the same fear that makes the religious types enforce their values and beliefs on others.

[tomcatshanger]

Wait. WHAT?

"To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified"

The fuck he says? I find life very sacred thankyouverymuch.

You're a fucking moron if you don't.

Religion has nothing to do with it. I'm an atheist. But damn right I value my life, the lives of my friends and family, and even the lives of the random stranger off the street or the life of the poor bastard living in shitholes around the world.

Of coarse we have a duty to preserve life. Who is this doctor dipshit to say otherwise?

Spending money to preserve the terminally ill seems to be more concerned with the availability of free health care than it does religion.

If they had to pay for it, folks would have to do a cost/benefit analysis and figure out if it's worth selling their own home to buy grandma another 6 months of sub-standard life past age 85.

Religion has something to do with not wanting to pull the plug, but that's not the same as "give grandpa another bypass surgery, STAT".