This is an emotionally charged issue for me, I lost my mom to ovarian cancer. My bet is that you, quite frankly, have no damn idea what your talking about.

My mom was supposed to live 6 months longer (at best). Instead she made it more than 2 years. Where they difficult years? Yep. However, they where still valuable ones. She got to see me marry. She met the future mother of her grandchildren. She got to see and do things she always wanted to do. She saw her estranged family again.

The value of those oncologists simply can't be discounted. It's an incredibly difficult profession, one in which most of your patients die. However, the ability to extend lives...even by a few months... and manage to make those last days as painless and productive as possible makes them angels in my book. Not profiteers.

It was interesting getting to know her oncologist. He clearly struggled with the emotions of his job. In the wake of her death he couldn't bring himself to attend her funeral (understandable). There was hardly a human being who knew her better in those last two years... and for that I'll be eternally grateful to him.

Your anger is misguided. I have weathered the deaths by cancer of several whom I care about very much. I found it grueling, relentless and painful for everyone. In every case much money changed hands in a very short period of time, always to the benefit of the oncologist and associated institution.

Your wishes aside, most doctors are profiteers. Take the profit out and most would find another professions. Don't you remember the attitude of hopeul medical-school bound students in college? Very few go to medical school for noble causes.

Your mom's oncologist likely attended very few, if any, of his patients' funerals.

As for: "It was interesting getting to know her oncologist. He clearly struggled with the emotions of his job. In the wake of her death he couldn't bring himself to attend her funeral (understandable).There was hardly a human being who knew her better in those last two years... and for that I'll be eternally grateful to him."

I must call you on your claims. Oncologists necessarily don't spend much time with each patient and it is very unlikely that

- you "got to know her oncologist",

- he "struggled with the emotions",

- he "knew her better" than anyone else .

The only way the last could be true is that your mother had no friends. Was she wealthy also? Oncologists do make exceptions for wealthy patrons.

Oncologists offer significant resources in pain management, which is very important. Life extension isn't the only thing doctors are good for.

Yes, but an oncologist is unnecessary for this. Pain management becomes the single most important thing to the patient until, finally, they reach the level where no legal painkiller can do anything for them. Then they lapse into a drug-induced coma-like state and die an excruciating death.

But before this, the patient is negotiating for something, anything, that will relieve his suffering. And money ceases to become an object.

Skip the oncologist, pass the drugs.

People don't see it as spending their net worth. The article opened with that, in fact. People expect that the insurance their companies provide pay for anything under the sun, and they sometimes get it at the expense of everyone else in the group.

Yes. And the cancer centers don't care where the money comes from, as long as it keeps on coming.