We train more doctors and lawyers than we need but fewer teachers. On any given day, 30 to 40 percent of the hospital beds in America are empty, but our classrooms are overcrowded and our transportation systems are deteriorating. We are great at treating sick people, but we are not that great at treating a sick economy. And we are not succeeding in international trade. (Lamm 133).
Euthanasia is a very cheap service. The cost of a dose of barbiturates and curare and the few hours in a hospital bed that it takes them to act is minute compared to the massive bills incurred by many patients in the last weeks and months of their lives. Already in Britain, There is a serious under- provision of expensive therapies like renal dialysis and intensive care, with the result that many otherwise preventable deaths occur. Legalizing euthanasia would save substantial financial resources which could be diverted to more "useful" treatments. This is one reason why some people strongly feel that euthanasia is not bad and should not be looked down upon.
There is no way we are going to come to grips with this problem until we also look at some of these areas that aren't going to go away . One of the toughest of these is what Victor Fuchs called "flat-of-the-curve medicine"- those medical procedures which are the highest in cost but achieve little or no improvement in health status. He says that they must be reduced or eliminated. We must demand that professional societies and licensing authorities establish some norms and standards for diagnostic and therapeutic practice that encompass both costs and medicine. Wer'e going to have to come up with some sort of concept of cost-effective medicine.
Are there no conditions when life is meaningless and should be quietly ended? If a person is subject to pain that won't stop as a result of a disease that can't be cured, must he or she suffer that pain as long as possible when there are gentle ways of putting an end to life? If a person suffers from a disease that deprives him or her of all memory and makes him or her a helpless lump of flesh that may live on for years.
