Ultimately, I think my old CFO put his finger on it when he said, "The real problem with healthcare is that we spend 80% of the money we spend on healthcare in our last two months of life. If people could just accept that dying is a consequence of being born, we could save a ton of money."I think I see what you (and he) *mean*... But I'm not quite sure that that is what you (and he) are *saying*, exactly.
I mean, the money we spend on healthcare gets spent *when we are ill* -- when the heck *else* would you spend it? And when we are ill is also, logically and inevitably, when we are liable to die -- so all too often it turns out that the period we spent spending money on healthcare also was our last. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try at all to treat illnesses that are in principle treatable, now does it?
Yes, yes, I know you were really talking about ultimately futile efforts to prolong the very last days of a life that is actually already all but over -- but the way you (or your old CFO) put it, it *sounds* a bit like the fallacy in my "Subject:" line.