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The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

(www.theguardian.com)
128 points mykowebhn | 17 comments | 29 Jul 25 15:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.658s | source | bottom
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asdfj999 ◴[29 Jul 25 17:11 UTC] No.44725886[source]▶
If I could change one thing about healthcare, it would be how we handle end of life care. Sadly, hospitals are full of 80-90+ year old people who cannot walk or talk for years, advanced dementia plus many other serious comorbidities, with severe malnutrition and recurrent aspiration pneumonia, with large non-healing sacral ulcers, who shit and piss themselves, and the family continues to insist we "do everything" to help this person. It is by far the most demoralizing part of working in healthcare, in my opinion, and an astronomical amount of expenditure and effort goes into torturing these people - at the direct order of the family - only to prolong suffering a few more months.
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1. trhway ◴[29 Jul 25 18:01 UTC] No.44726457[source]▶
>Sadly, hospitals are full of 80-90+ year old people who cannot ... and the family continues to insist we "do everything" to help this person.

so what? It is on their dime, not yours. If i'm a 90 years old and wanna drag my existence out it is my choice as long as i'm paying for it, directly or through insurance (and Medicare is an insurance too btw)

It is easy to suggest to terminate lives earlier when it isn't your life. History is full of such attempts.

One should be glad that such a large sector of economy - healthcare - has a great stable demand and a great labor market. Overwork - teach more nurses and doctors. The issue is completely self-inflicted as the labor supply is artificially constrained:

"In 2023, U.S. nursing schools turned away 65,766 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate programs, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN)"

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2. ◴[29 Jul 25 18:33 UTC] No.44726817[source]▶
3. n8henrie ◴[29 Jul 25 19:07 UTC] No.44727123[source]▶
In my experience it is rarely the patient making this choice. Much more often the children, who are often making a big show of how much more they love mom or dad compared to the other sibs.
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4. trhway ◴[29 Jul 25 19:16 UTC] No.44727217[source]▶
And the patient made that choice by establishing that family dynamics and by not having specific instructions even while seeing over decades the family dynamics they created themselves. I'd say that is an explicit clear choice. And anyway it isn't outsider's business to tell a family how to care for their own.
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5. general1726 ◴[29 Jul 25 19:52 UTC] No.44727563[source]▶
> so what? It is on their dime, not yours.

Actually in Europe it is on a dime of a taxpayer so also his.

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6. trhway ◴[29 Jul 25 20:10 UTC] No.44727710[source]▶
No, they paid into it their whole life. So, it is their dime not the current taxpayer’s. The taxpayer is paying for their own future.
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7. nradov ◴[29 Jul 25 20:15 UTC] No.44727764[source]▶
Medicare is not insurance. The word "insurance" has a specific meaning, and the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program doesn't meet that definition. (There are a variety of other payers or health plans in the US healthcare system which fill a similar role to insurance but are not actually insurance.)
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8. trhway ◴[29 Jul 25 22:26 UTC] No.44728977[source]▶
ok, call it a contract between an individual and society - the individual pays taxes today and when retired gets his/her medical needs taken care about by the society. Looks like an insurance contract to me, btw.

Anyway, like with any contract, whatever the individual is due under that contract is his dime, not the taxpayers'.

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9. nradov ◴[29 Jul 25 23:14 UTC] No.44729340{3}[source]▶
It doesn't matter what you're due under a contract if the counterparty is insolvent. Medicare beneficiaries are going to have to accept reduced benefits and higher fees. This is unavoidable due to demographic changes.
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10. trhway ◴[30 Jul 25 01:05 UTC] No.44730017{4}[source]▶
the society reneging on its contract today means that the current taxpayers will lose the trust in the society and in particular will be significantly discouraged from paying taxes, etc. as they would lose belief in the society keeping its side of the bargain in the future.
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11. general1726 ◴[30 Jul 25 01:17 UTC] No.44730095{3}[source]▶
That's not how state pensions or state healthcare works.
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12. nradov ◴[30 Jul 25 04:54 UTC] No.44730990{5}[source]▶
It doesn't matter whether taxpayers are discouraged. Medicare taxes are automatically deducted by employers for most workers.
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13. nicoburns ◴[30 Jul 25 11:46 UTC] No.44732991{3}[source]▶
> And the patient made that choice by establishing that family dynamics and by not having specific instructions even while seeing over decades the family dynamics they created themselves.

Most people who are old today (or in the last few decades) probably wouldn't have thought about it because it wasn't something that affected their parents who likely didn't live that long in the first place.

14. billy99k ◴[30 Jul 25 12:47 UTC] No.44733520{4}[source]▶
Which is why we should be against taxpayer-funded healthcare: You don't get to make some of these decisions because you aren't paying for it.
15. _aavaa_ ◴[30 Jul 25 15:02 UTC] No.44735143[source]▶
> One should be glad that such a large sector of economy - healthcare - has a great stable demand and a great labor market.

This is not the tourism industry, a “great stable demand” is sick and suffering people.

The hospital has limited resources, which are being taken up by people who have no hope of getting better (they ain’t getting younger). A push to do everything we can to stop them from dying buys us what? A few more months of pain and delirium before we reach the same result.

16. trhway ◴[01 Aug 25 05:16 UTC] No.44753230{6}[source]▶
taxpayers are voters. So it does matter a lot if they are discouraged.
17. n8henrie ◴[01 Aug 25 14:27 UTC] No.44757300{3}[source]▶
Very naive take.

Patients' children regularly override the patient's clearly expressed wishes once the patient no longer has decisional capacity.