Only applies if .. if the patient can sign, or does have family to do so / as wished. Not all of us are in such position.
Then there would be no DNR signed. A person wanting a DNR order should discuss it with their doctor and have it as part of their medical record. Not sure about other states, but in Texas there is an Out-of-Hospital form that is signed and kept in the patient's records. It should be available to emergency medical personnel, maybe posted on the refrigerator door or somewhere. This is something that can be discussed with your doctor and kept on file. The Texas Out-of-Hospital DNR: Is free Does not affect your will, estate, or finances Does not affect your health or life insurance premiums Is signed by your doctor Applies only to certain procedures given by EMS, hospital emergency room personnel, nursing home staff, or other health care professionals Allows you to have some control over how much medical treatment you receive and for how long Does not prevent treatment and medicine to reduce pain Does not allow mercy killing or assisted suicide Does not require a lawyer or notary to complete Can be canceled (revoked) at any time, regardless of your mental state.
A DNR may be part of a living will, which is simply an advance healthcare directive. Although the rules may differ from state to state, I believe this can be done without the services of an attorney, but we had ours drawn up by a lawyer since he included it in the fee for establishing an LLC, not that the two are at all related.
I have the advance directory done, and I have it on my phone and also both my son and my daughter have it on their phone or iPad; so if something should happen to me, one of them will have a copy, if my phone copy is not there for some reason. Mine is called “My Directives” and you can find it online and fill it out for free. Mine came from Humana insurance, , but you can just use the website, I think. https://mydirectives.com/
A relief to everyone with cancer. Would you mind posting some links to those cures? More "foraging berries and leaves" supplements? Of course I read the title of the thread. I even read all the responses before I chime in. Too bad others don't.
The links were posted many times in the past. Now it is not a good idea. People who want to find the known and proven cures have done so. Those who don't want to don't , even when published.
There is a lot more money in managing, controlling, and treating than there is in curing. That has not changed since Rockefeller took over medicine.
On the OP, while I agree that the cost of medical treatment in the United States is very expensive as compared to what it was in the not-too-distant past, there are reasons for that beyond greed. At one time, someone without even a high school diploma could intern with a doctor and become a doctor. That's no longer the case. Today, in order to become a doctor, someone has to first earn a Bachelor's Degree (4 years), and then complete Medical School (4 years), after which there is a Residency Program (3-7 years), with additional education required for specialties. Compare that to the education required in order to become a police officer (6 months), who also earns a pretty good living. Then there are the considerable costs of medical malpractice insurance and other insurance requirements, which are borne by the individual physician if he is in business for himself. Using the same comparisons, police officers are generally granted judicial immunity from lawsuits, or the costs will be paid by the taxpayers. There are also costs associated with licensure fees, registration fees, lab fees, application fees, and continuing education. There is also the fact that medical equipment is not cheap, in part because of the insurance requirements placed on companies manufacturing medical equipment. There may be benefits that accompany the strict regulation of anyone in the medical field, but they come with a cost that is transferred to those who use medical services.
Another big cost is regulation, primarily by the FDA, but there are others. The cryostats our company made fell under two types of regulations, one because they are used as a medical device that can influence decisions of a physician and two because they contain refrigerants that come under environmental regulations. Operating microscopes were another. We had to have a separate sales force for them, especially trained to navigate the sales of medical devices. I guarantee you all that adds to the cost.
Expensive medical equipment also has to be replaced often because no one wants to be found using obsolete equipment. Even in the EMS field, in order to be competitive, we had to replace perfectly functional ambulances with new ones periodically, and we upgraded our ECG/defibrillation equipment whenever new models came out, plus there was all the disposable stuff.
And during all those years, their contemporaries are out there generating a salary, while the doctors are deferring their income years and are racking up more debt. It's a double-hit. That's why I'm in favor of giving them every benefit of the doubt...there is little else they can do with that expensive degree and training, except maybe pharmaceutical or medical supplies sales. And can you imagine that after all that, you find that you don't really like it? I was able to jump around to a bunch of different stuff, or to do the same thing in different industries. I hate being "stuck." It plays with my head.
I just got an email from my senator who does nothing I like. She was saying how she will now be fighting for universal healthcare. The reason healthcare is so high is because of insurance and hospital price fixing. I looked into one of the few concierge doctors around here and was surprised by how skipping insurance could lower costs. When the government is involved, waste happens as well as corruption. Mostly good diet and good supplements can fix everything now. It really is so sad what a mess we are in.