Prolonging Life: Ethical and Legal Implications
Professor of Law and Medicine Alex Capron discusses some of the ethical issues pertaining to the care of dying patients, including decisions about when to stop treatment.
What Price?: Emergence and Impact of managed Care, The
The fact that most medical expenditures are paid by health insurance often blinds us to the actual costs of medical care. Despite the initiation of cost-saving measures known as "managed care" in the mid 1980s the cost of health insurance continues ...
What Price?: Factors Contributing to Rising Cost of Healthcare
Why have healthcare costs risen so precipitously? For one thing, the medical scene itself has changed, as Dr. William Schwartz, author of The Painful Prescription remembers. In the 1950s health-related expenditures comprised 5 percent or less of gro...
Final Chapter: Death Isn't What It Used to Be
A century ago, most people spent their last hours of life at home surrounded by family and friends. More recent generations have experienced death in the hospital often shrouded in machines and tubes. For many people death is a subject they choose n...
What Price?: Healthcare Dilemma: No Easy Answer, The
Competing need...limited dollars. Should more people be served a little less well or should medical care be provided, regardless of cost, to anyone who can afford to pay for it? Renowned health policy experts and health care professionals probe the ...
Final Chapter: Are There Limits to Patient Determination of Life vs. Death?
Some medical professionals wonder if "do not resuscitate" orders are being carried too far. Should the pendulum swing back to a mid point between that and doing everything possible to preserve life? Activists promoting euthanasia or physician-assist...
What Price?: Healthcare Dilemma: Solution Strategies, The
In the last few years, many healthcare solution strategies have been placed on the table. The fact that no definitive course of action has been adopted reflects the complexities of the issues involved. Equitable access to the healthcare system, many...
The Medical Marketplace: Who Determines Access to Healthcare?
The question of who decides about access to healthcare in a particular circumstance is a major issue facing this nation. Kidney dialysis was just such an issue before it became a Medicare entitlement. Today patients and doctors find themselves fight...
Final Chapter: Reactions to an Impending Death Sentence
People's reactions to an impending death sentences do not always follow a predictable course. Emotions range from anger to denial to acceptance, moving back and forth. Fear is common - fear of pain, fear of being abandoned, fear of not having time t...
Final Chapter: Prolonging Life: A Patient's Choice
Some patients faced with a terminal illness do not want to prolong an existence that to them is subhuman. In the 1970s and '80s the medical profession felt it was their professional and legal obligation to do everything possible to prolong life. Cou...