Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
In this case you are placing, I believe, the decision in the hands of the DR for the most part. And while that might be fine, he would likely ceed this decision to the patients and family in many cases. Dr. absolutely CANNOT determine outcome many time.
No, that's not what I was intending to say. When I said no treatment unless the patient had a certain level of health I was envisioning a checklist of things that would disqualify the person from the new treatment, based on the researched statistical likelihood of success. For example (and I'm not a doc so I have no idea if this would be reasonable, but I imagine studies have been done that would come up with reasonable ideas on this line of thought) heart bypass operations will not be done (paid by medicare) on people over 80 who have not been capable of walking 25 feet without assistance in the last month. Or another, life support will only be paid for by medicare/medicaid for X period of time if the patient has been determined to be in a persistent vegetative state. Insurance companies figured out how to take the doc out of the death panel process. Surely medicare could do the same thing.

As kib mentioned, I would imagine that other countries have already put together such lists of when things will and won't be covered.