Spend Money on Late Life Care or Healthy Living?
Why is our society so focused on spending well over the majority of health care on repairing injured people, who “happen” to be in the last two years of their life? This would include cancer patients, stroke victims and Alzheimer's to name a few. We as American’s are seeing our health care dollars dwindle down due to the longer lives of people and this may cause us to never see a single dollar of this health care that we are paying into. So why are we spending all of this money on older people that are close to dying? Quite simple. They are human-beings. They are our grandparents, our parents, our loved ones. They are just older versions of ourselves.
I have no issue with helping older adults. I know I would like the same care when I become older, but is this really the best way to spend our money. According to the American Public Health Association, we spent only a mere 3% of our health care dollars on prevention methods. To make this easier to digest, we are allowing these older adults deteriorate before we aide them.
Granted, I know that health prevention is probably less expensive so the percentage of money is spent would naturally be less, but imagine the quality of life we could provide to our older generations if throughout their entire life they were living a healthier life style. I know myself, I’d rather lead a healthy lifestyle my entire life and pass away quick and painless, rather than suffer unbearable pains due to a poor quality of health over a long period of time.
We will all die someday. Dark statement, but it’s true. Unfortunately the American Health system wants to prolong suffering and spend large amounts of money just to keep a person alive who may not even want to live any longer. In my opinion, lets focus our health care money on health preventative measures so older adults can lead a healthy lifestyle for as long as they can, and when their time is up, they don’t have to wither away to nothing before they pass on. Lets help them keep their dignity.
