Forbes.com: What I learned about health care when my cat died

[LiberalElite]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/08/08/what-i-learned-about-health-care-when-my-cat-died/?google_editors_picks=true

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My cat died just before Thanksgiving. Twelve years before my girlfriend had told me she wanted a cat, and we traipsed through animal shelters until I saw this beautiful, white, frightened creature, huddled in the back of a metal cage until she was given a hand to snuggle with.

We named her Bonny, after the Scottish folk song we sang to get her to creep out from under the couch or down from the tiny, filthy space above the fridge. I’ve never felt so close to an animal. Bonny would sit near me while I wrote, close her eyes and purr at the sound of my voice, and follow me around the house. My girlfriend, now my wife, would joke that I’d stayed with her to be with the cat.

When we had children, Bonny taught them. My son, as a toddler, adored the cat, and when she meowed at him for being too rough he would cry. Yet the same cat walked over to my baby daughter before she could crawl and let her clasp at tufts of fur. She helped us learn to be a family.

I think that’s what pets are for. A pet is not a person, even if our hearts sometimes tell us different. But the way we relate to animals is an expression of our humanity. One of the reasons we have pets is because they let us learn about the challenging parts of life – birth, love, arguments, illness, death – in a way that is very real, and very emotional, but far safer than when there is a human life involved. And this is what happened when I carried Bonny to a veterinary urgent care center, singing to soothe her, and never saw her again. She led me to rethink my ideas about healthcare, technology, and how we pay for them, and most of all about the role of doctors and their relationships with human patients.
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[nikto]

1. If we are open to the lessons...

Pets can teach us a lot about life. And death.

They aren't people, but maybe they are, in some cases, better?

[nikto]

2. For-profit healthcare is too big a ca$h-Cow for our elites

To take the profit out of the system, America may have to take it
from the elites' cold, dead hands.

They will fight it to the death.



As long as The People win, OK, with me.

[JayhawkSD]

3. I read the cited article. Good stuff.

The writer has a gift with words, and conveys his message very movingly.

There was a point that he missed, I think, or at most only brushed on. When we take care of our pets we are given costs and make a decision as to the worth of spending that amount of money to give our pet an extension of life. We ask will if be a good life that the pet will and enjoy, and how long will it last, and we weigh that against the price we are quoted.

On a personal note, we have spent close to $5500 to keep our little calico, Molly, going in the face of lymphoma. It's been a bit over a year and we are happy with that decision, but she's losing ground now so we won't have her much longer. Anyway.

We really should be given that same choice as we reach the end of the human journey. It's a decision that I would like to make for myself in the face of a lethal illness. What will the treatment involve? What will it cost? What kind of life will success provide? How long will that life last? Absent any one of those factors, how can I make an informed decision?

[Hoppy]

4. I agree. the problem is that most of us are not able to make that decision about ourselves.

This is because of others who are afraid of their own death.