The ebb and flow of the life force

In an earlier post regarding hints that the government would like to (and will eventually) stop treating people who are terminally ill or badly injured, I pointed out that even those who think, in the cold, clinical light of good health that they’d want to pull the plug if they found themselves in extremis don’t actually feel that way when they’re suddenly facing death.  That is, just because the government doesn’t think your life is worthwhile doesn’t mean you don’t think your life is worthwhile.

Chuck, who was seriously wounded during the Iraq War, provides the flip side to this fact.  With serious illness or injury comes depression.  (I can corroborate this one myself, having become deeply depressed a few decades ago after a major and debilitating surgery.)  Some might temporarily have that desire for life sucked out of them, and a government that capitalizes on that transient weakness is a government that kills its citizens.

No matter how you slice it, whether the government is deciding that the sick don’t deserve to get well, or that the depressed should be allowed to give in to their temporary state, the bottom line is very, very bad.  I’d rather be at the mercy of a million doctors and insurance companies than have to place my life in the hands of a monolithic, non-religious, non-profit driven (because dead people don’t buy insurance or pay bills) government system.