Re: Cost-benefit vs medicine

[Dan Vo <Dan.Vo@m.cc.utah.edu>]

On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, Tuan V Nguyen wrote:

> 
> Hi anh Huy and friends,
> 
> >BTW, last year a state hospital in Britain refused to continue
> >to treat a girl with leukaemia on the ground that it would be
> >very expensive and she has little chance. It was a big national
> >controversy. A philathropist stepped in and paid for her treatment.
> >Unfortunately it wasn't successful.
> 
> 	The issue that you reported is VERY VERY sensitive 
> these days. You see, in the rational economic age such as 
> now, things and even human, are evaluated in terms of 
> dollars, under the euphimism of "cost-benefit". People, who 
> advocate this concept, argue that if a person has a limited 
> chance of suvival, then treatment won't bring any benefit and 
> waste of money. They then say that the patient should be left 
> in palliative care i.e. to wait for death. What a terrible 
> idea! They even talk about quality of life (QoL) these days, 
> and evaluate treatments based on QoL. 
> 
> 	To me, this is one of the dreadful inventions of 
> economists (is there any economist in VNSA here?). I mean, 
> how can you place a value on a human being? What is the value 
> of ethics? Answer: not evaluable. The task of medicine and 
> physicians is to save and relieve human being from suffering 
> regardless of the cost involved. Fullstop! 
>        
> 	I hope the health care system in VN is not going down 
> this way.
> 
> 	Tuan
> ********************************************************************
     Xin cha`o ca'c anh chi. va` ca'c ba'c.
> 
 * There are some of my thoughts related to the articles above:

  Although I am not an Economist, I know that Economics is about how we, 
human being, deal effectively with those scarce resources that we have on 
earth. We just simply can not get all we want. It's just like when we 
have enough resource and money to cure for only one patient but 
there are two of them need to be treated, what should 
doctors or hospital manager decide ? To cure for a patient who has more 
chances to survive than the other one ? Or let just bring on a coin ? 
(there is no other external factors influence the decision)    
  
  Which one is more effective ? Curing one or both die !!!
  
  I agree that the value of human being and ethics is very important to us 
but we are living in the imperfect world where our everyday life is about 
chosing; Eg: we chose the best way to solve our math problem, we chose 
what we wear today, we chose who to marry, as well and so on. Life 
is a big, big chosing game, I would say . And we all want 
to make sure that our decisions bring us the joy and the happiness either 
physically or mentally. 
  
  Cheers,

  Dan.