> I don't think its politically toxic

Ever hear of the Obamacare death panels? The ones where doctors would decide if your loved one was too old and shouldn’t get treatment?

Yeah. That’s this.

What it really was that Medicare would pay for consultation with doctors (?) to discuss end of life care and setup living wills and DNRs and such if the person wanted.

That way if something happened and they were taken to the hospital they could be treated the way they wanted to be and not stuck in a coma on a vent for the rest of their life if that was against their wishes.

But the Republicans branded then “death panels” (which for political purposes was brilliant). So the choice of having help making those decisions was removed.

We don't care for our elderly. We fear death.

If our society really cared for the elderly, they would be integrated and respected, instead of segregated and shunned. We do the latter because we fear age, sickness, and death. Fear isn't caring.

> We fear death

In the US. It's perhaps the most striking difference that hit me during my stay overseas. In the Old World we occasionally get people completely panicking about their own death. In the US, seemingly _everyone_ is like that.

I'd like to hear how elders are treated in these societies that don't fear death as much.

I'd wager: not very differently. But not out of fear. The social isolation of old age is the same everywhere. Young people have their own lives to live.

> The social isolation of old age is the same everywhere

That is certainly not true. Traditional societies and non-western societies have far different ways of relating to elders than we do, and even among western societies there are variations.

Well, yes I see what you mean. What I meant was: it's the same in the US and western Europe. But certainly if you go to more "old fashioned" places, the elderly usually live with the family and are taken care of. To be fair, this still happens even in "advanced" western societies. I seem to recall this also goes together with a lot of elderly abuse.

I wonder if elder abuse is correlated with younger people "having their lives to live".

I disagree, spending on these things is growing at 2x GDP growth so yes more of the pie is going to this. What I'm suggesting is that at some point the pie isn't big enough for this. No matter what happens eventually standard of care will roll back/fewer people will be covered etc. Ideally we can innovate out of this situation but after spending 8 years working in healthcare I've gotten cynical about it.