by Dave McGill

Some day, if we’re lucky, we’ll all be elderly. A few have suggested I might already be there. And, actually, they may have a point, because I felt a little uncomfortable listening to the president, Wednesday, as he discussed the nation’s health care at a town-meeting-type gathering at the White House.

It all sounded good. One way to cut medical costs, the president suggested, would be to stop trying to prolong the lives of people who are considered terminal. What concerned me about this, however, was the possibility that such thinking could become a foot in the door – a first step in the direction of a mindset that might have severe consequences for our aging baby boomers.

Sure, in the beginning, such a policy might be said to apply only to “people who are about to die.” I’ve noticed, however, that most things tend to evolve. They rarely remain unchanged.

And the economic environment, looking down the road, does not appear to be very expense-friendly – or elderly-friendly. With a mounting federal debt and government interest payments threatening to eventually eclipse even the military budget, not to mention the looming travails of Medicare and Social Security, the need to cut healthcare costs is only likely to increase over time, and substantially so.

Also, I have to admit that I’m somewhat influenced by what I saw to the north, in the Canadian healthcare system. I’m not talking about socialized medicine, at least not directly. I’m talking about a mindset that I believe exists, at least in the Province of Nova Scotia, and at least in the case of my father’s treatment. That mindset involved the thinking that, at a certain age, life should not be further preserved, regardless of the circumstances.

I think my father ran into that mindset. He retired from his career in Boston in 1959 and spent his remaining years primarily in Nova Scotia where he had grown up. Into his early nineties he was robust and healthy, apparently on his way to 100. Nevertheless, a flu-like cold put him in the hospital at the age of 94. He quickly recovered, but a nurse failed to raise the side of his bed and he fell out and broke his hip, after which I paid him a visit.

He was mending well from that event when a hospital worker inadvertently threw out his false teeth, and here’s where he ran into the mindset, although, at the time, I failed to realize it. I was told the teeth would be available soon and it appeared from his condition that he would be out of the hospital in two to three weeks so I returned to California.

However, someone, somewhere up the healthcare chain decided the new teeth were an “unnecessary expense,” undoubtedly because of his age. I made repeated telephone inquiries from California, but was completely stymied by the reply that they were on the way. And, of course, they weren’t.

As he didn’t like the drink the hospital provided him, I’m convinced that the absence of solid food contributed to his death about a month later.

One could wonder if a mindset such as this is prevalent throughout Canada, or if this was just an unusual situation? I don’t know. Perhaps one of our Canadian Gatherers can answer that.

The real question, however, is this: Would what the president suggested this week eventually lead to some sort of age-cap thinking within our own healthcare system?