Responses: The Discernment Act, The Cost of Medical Care

First read topic: Debate: "Society should limit the amount of health care available to older people." Read the articles in the text, conduct your own research. This is a very important issue, and its correlating debate must be approached initellectually. 
Then my response: According to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, discrimination should not happen to anyone and rights (as well as respect for this rights) should never be unequal in any categorizations of human life. These categorizations include sex, gender, race, belief, religion, age, etc. Based from this, it should be noted that “anyone”, regardless of whom they are and how much can they contribute to the present society, should be treated with equal respect with everyone else. To further dwell in this argument, let’s examine if society should limit the amount of healthcare for elderly people.
First of all, society is external to an individual and is composed of everyone. This means that even the elderlies are an indispensable part of the society. And, for one to say that society should have the right to proper healthcare, then he should consider everyone with no exceptions, else he is not talking about society but an aggregate of greedy individuals. Aside from this existentialist way of thinking about the rights of the elderly, we must not forget the contribution of the elderly to the creation of the society, the institutions, and more specifically, the health care that we enjoy today. Just imagine all of the efforts being spent by the generation today for the betterment of the next generation. Notice how much that is? Now imagine a time in the future, where your contributions (e.g. cure for AIDS and cancer) are being freely enjoyed by everyone, except for those people who created it in the first place.
In conclusion, I believe that since everyone has had their own share of efforts in making this world a better place – whether past or present generation – everyone should also have the right to have access to these regardless of who they are, how old they are, and how productive they are. Lastly, I do believe that this importance is much more significant for the healthcare industry where its main function is providing a good sense of well-being to everyone.
Then both peers responses: 
Peer 1: 
In reference to whether or not society should limit a person’s healthcare due to age, I think that is a hard no. The above statement is somewhat unsettling because it seems as though older people should be less entitled to medical care and therefore are somehow less “worthy” or human. As we’ve seen throughout this class, society has a lot of issues that are already needing to be worked out and resolved, therefore adding to that list an entire generation’s wellbeing solely because of age seems careless. 
I also think that ultimately finances will have to play this role and determine who can afford to continue to receive the care they need. I am not unaware that medical costs can skyrocket very quickly, especially when it involves extended stays in the hospital and prolonged treatment of illnesses. I can’t offer a quick fix or resolution for how to help with the financial burden of prolonged medical care, but I can say with certainty that limiting healthcare to people simply because they reach a certain age is wrong.
Older generations are a crucial part of the structure of society and therefore expediting the end of their life because a lack of healthcare would seriously hinder society as a whole. I also think that those making this kind of decision are more than likely not in the older generation, and are therefore not able to fully empathize with the outcomes of this kind of extreme decision. Your life and wellbeing doesn’t matter less just because you’re older.
Peer 2: s Callahan's plan of age based rationing proposes, I think there should be some form of institutional mechanism to make a rational expectation of outcome for the dollars spent. It is not ethical, or monetarily reasonable to spend over a million dollars on chemotherapy treatments that at best will only add 2-3 years of life as was done to my grandmother. Instead of being able to spend the rest of her life comfortable and with family, she spent months in the hospital so drugged up that she was delirious most of the time. This is not money well spent, for my grandfather or the state. The doctor knew that the outcome, at its best would not add to her longevity. He was running a healthcare business. Like all businesses they need to bring in more customers, and like all salespeople they try to sell there products by overstating the positives about the product. No one would buy a product for a million dollars if they were told they would only be able to use it foe a year or two and it will make your life more and more miserable the more you use it.
As long as medicine runs on a free market system doctors will run their practice as a business. they have to because it is. there is no way to move beyond that. there is no way to treat medicine as an outcome solution based machine while it is being paid for whether the treatments are justified or needed.
What you write. Tell what you agree with, like about each post. If you have any questions or anything to add then do so. Please use one page per peer. Keep separate.