OK, so a guy with a really bad brain injury miraculously recovered after spending 20 years in a semi-vegetative state on a hospital bed, with all kinds of high-tech gear hooked up to him. Well, good for him. (I guess. I'm not in his shoes and, obviously, wouldn't wanna be.) For Tammy Bruce and some of her commenters this proves that taking the famously comatose Terri Schiavo out of her vegetative state and allowing her to die was murder, plain and simple - after all, if this guy recovered, why couldn't she? If not after twenty, then maybe 50, maybe 120 years? Let's set aside the difference in the extent of brain damage in both cases, and ask these questions instead:
How much did it cost to keep this guy alive for twenty years, and who paid for it? If the money came from his savings, or his family, I'm perfectly fine with that. They can keep him in the hospital for another 20 years, for what I care. In a private room, with a view of the ocean. However, if the money came from insurance or from the government (read: taxes), then I have a problem with it. Healthcare is neither free nor an infinite resource. If insurance or taxes paid for it, then we all paid for it, without being asked to. Let's imagine, for a second, that a lot of people get inspired by this story and demand, in their living wills, to be kept alive for however long it takes. Let's further assume, that a law is passed (which people like Tammy would undoubtedly support) banning anybody from disconnecting life support from a patient, no matter how hopeless his case. (Remember Terry Wallis? His case seemed hopeless, too!)
Even with today's technology we are able to keep people alive for a very long time. Her heart failed? No problem, hook her up to this machine! His lungs no longer work? No problem, plug him in here! Brain dead? Oh, that's a piece o' cake - this apparatus over there will keep him alive forever. Most of these people will never recover. Our hospitals will turn into some bizarre version of "Matrix", with rows and rows of unconscious, "almost dead" bodies being kept alive decade after decade with sophisticated machinery. Nobody will ever die - but is this life?? This nightmare is technically possible already, and will be even easier to realize in just a couple of decades.
And what about the cost of this ghoulish folly? How many Americans already can't afford health insurance? 40 million? If we force insurance companies to cover life-sustaining machinery for thousands or milions of never-to-die bodies, a few hundred of the richest Americans will perhaps be able to afford health insurance premiums - and they don't need it anyway. When considering something, it helps to think about it as becoming commonplace. (Wasn't it Immanuel Kant, who gave us this sage advice?) Oh, and please spare me the "you can't put a price tag on human life" nonsense. Oh yes, you can. If not on life, then on everything that life needs to stay alive.
P.S. Keeping Terri Schiavo in a vegetative state all these years was nothing if not a "cruel and unusual punishment". I can't fathom how anybody with half a heart would wish this on anybody else. And it fills me with dread to think that my wife or son might be prevented from an act of mercy, were I to become brain dead. That's why I put "do not resuscitate" in my living will. I hope it will be honored.
