tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906854738305262612.post7323316630115229708..comments2024-01-16T13:45:18.658-06:00Comments on The North Coast: Moral Hazard: Our Responsibility CrisisThe North Coasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14292115710427172625noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906854738305262612.post-85903876744543627622009-02-08T11:45:00.000-06:002009-02-08T11:45:00.000-06:00You would think there would be guidelines concerni...You would think there would be guidelines concerning suitability. I work in financial, and I can tell you that if I took this woman's last few hundred dollars and bought her a high-risk stock and lost her money, I would be looking at serious discipline. <BR/><BR/>These children are HUMAN LIVES,people who will have to live with what was done to them, yet no consideration regarding the suitability of the treatment was ever made. How did she pay for fertility treatments to begin with, being a welfare recipient on Medicaid? Did the state pay for this? Did the doctor do it Pro Bono? Clearly, the practitioner gave no thought to the woman's financial condition, existing family obligations, or her overall health or welfare. He had the right to refuse her the treatment on these grounds, and most people would say he had the obligation.<BR/><BR/>Personally, I wish these advanced fertility treatments had never been devised, because they've opened an ethical can of snakes and have created ethical quagmires that wouldn't be possible without them. For example, one 30-something man, single and with no marraige prospects, decided he wanted a kid and engaged a surrogate mother, who was artificially inseminated with his sperm for a fee. When the child was born, he did not want it and neither did she. We are having a lot of children born whose parentage cannot be traced and for whom no one is responsible. Worse, though, we are coming to regard a human baby not as a unique human being with a unique soul and human rights, but as a product that can be ordered up to spec, like a computer or something. Now, many scientists are talking about how to patent particular genes. What's next? Will people be born without the legal right to reproduce for fear of violating someone else's patent? The implications are very scary. These technologies degrade human life and turn us all into livestock.The North Coasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14292115710427172625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906854738305262612.post-29565745145968208552009-02-08T10:58:00.000-06:002009-02-08T10:58:00.000-06:00There should be ethical guidelines for fertility t...There should be ethical guidelines for fertility treatments. Preference should be given to those who have no children. Treatments and procedures should NOT be done unless the mother has the means to care and provide for the resulting children.<BR/><BR/>What happened in this particular situation far outside the ethical pale. I don't envy those children. Their start on life is anything but promising.Fargohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13532756626266773921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906854738305262612.post-43313985865843142882009-02-05T01:40:00.000-06:002009-02-05T01:40:00.000-06:00An analogous situation may be found in the Medicar...An analogous situation may be found in the Medicare program which, to date, has unfunded liabilities in the hundreds of trillions. Why? Because statisctics show that 90-95% of our lifetime expenditures for health care are made in the very last couple of years of life. I'm an RN who has witnessed this over many years of practice. Just as we shouldn't subsidize irresponsible breeding practices, neither should the public at large be asked (forced) to subsidize the costs of a for-profit health care system to needlessly resuscitate and maintain patients (elderly or otherwise) who are terminally old or ill and who, without these "heroic" efforts, would simply die. <BR/><BR/>Triage is a time-tested practice for deciding, from the hospital to the battlefiled, what constitues an appropriate level of care. It's time to apply this concept in our hospitals, nursing homes, etc. It would reequire a wholesale reordering of priorities, but that's what will be needed if any of the health care system is to remain viable. Of course, it will be made easier by nationalizing every health care-related enterprise, up to and including the pharmaceutical industry. Today, given the bloated epectations placed on the system (everyone MUST live as long as they possibly can), everyone's right to competent and compassionate health care is simply not compatible with, and is jeopardized by, the profit motive.<BR/><BR/>I'm 65, and the prospect of being triaged out of this veil of tears doesn't bother me in the least.emahohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03697894734765381469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906854738305262612.post-8451640662973793532009-02-02T06:38:00.000-06:002009-02-02T06:38:00.000-06:00God, how I feel for the children, and we can't lea...God, how I feel for the children, and we can't leave them in the lurch, can we?<BR/><BR/>But there's a real possibility that California's huge structure of lavish entitlements, which that woman is clearly counting on, could just crash....or that the whole state could collapse. They've already cut state workers back to minimum wage, can't finance their schools, and are closing state offices one day a week.<BR/><BR/>Some people forget that every benefit has to be paid for by somebody, and as we get poorer and poorer, some very nasty choices will have to be made.The North Coasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14292115710427172625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906854738305262612.post-30759295303605777382009-02-02T06:22:00.000-06:002009-02-02T06:22:00.000-06:00I, too, am on the bandwagon on your thoughts regar...I, too, am on the bandwagon on your thoughts regarding this woman. Her, I don't feel sorry for. I, too, am outraged at the fact that she is on welfare and the doctors who performed the in vitro fertilization process. The ones I now feel sorry for are the children. California is bankrupt and can not afford to pay welfare recipients and pay out tax refunds. What is this mother going to do to feed and clothe all these children?? What I am hearing now is that she has an obsession with having children. That does not give her the right to bring more mouths to feed into this world. An obsession is something that should be dealt with in a psychiatric setting.<BR/><BR/>Lately I have been thinking how our society is akin to the ancient feudal societies of long ago times; ours is just on a much grander scale. The peasants. back then, were there only to keep the royalty happy and well-fed. We have been supplying the dollars to keep these big corporations rolling in greens. We have also swallowed the crap that the banks have fed us regarding how easy it is to get credit cards and loans that generate the revenue that these financial institutions rake in by the fistfuls.<BR/><BR/>I do feel, though, that there has been a massive dumbing down of our society. Unfortunately we now have to pay for what we have been willingly led into, like a docile flock of sheep.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com