Further Reading

Sunday, 17 November 2024

Almost 15 years ago Bill Gates suggested a “death panel” system be implemented in the USA because palliative care wasn’t cost-effective

 In 2010, Bill Gates weighed up the cost of keeping “terminally ill” Americans alive versus paying for teachers’ salaries.

He said the US was unwilling to question if spending money on people in “the last three months” of their lives was cost-effective. He suggested there wasn’t a benefit in end-of-life care and a decision should be made to end people’s lives instead of providing costly palliative care. “That’s called the death panel,” he said.

Bill Gates was interviewed at an Aspen Ideas Festival in 2010 and said that the USA must get medical costs under control and re-examine its funding priorities to prevent its education system from further erosion. He said medical costs are dominating state and federal budgets in the form of Medicare and other payments, and fewer funds are available for education.

Gates told Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson that the USA had demonstrated an unwillingness to question if “spending $1 million on the last three months” of a person’s life is a cost-effective direction, especially considering the same amount of money can keep 10 teachers employed.

He called for the nation to do a better job of examining the benefits of costly end-of-life medical care. “That’s called the death panel and you’re not supposed to have that discussion,” Gates said, taking a jab at critics of the health care bill that the US Congress had considered earlier that year....<<<Read More>>>...