Usually, You Should Save the Life Regardless the Expense

One reason hospice is less expensive on its patients than death is for many others, is you sometimes (not always) sign away your rights to curative care. Curative care can be very expensive, even if you are living at home and just seeing the doctor. The thing is, I do not like us having to sign away our rights to life-saving measures. I do, indeed, wonder if this (getting us to sign away our rights to curative care because the expense is too great for the hospitals) played a large role in how hospice came about. The hospitals often feel they cannot afford to keep patients alive. Some people have no insurance. And, if the insurance companies were paying for it, would it drive them broke, instead of the hospitals?
Here is the thing: Life-saving treatments are pretty much the most expensive of all treatments. Think of a heart replacement. Are we to give every person dying of heart problems a new heart? The expense for health care would go through the roof. Still, I confess, a part of me (good part), wants to save every person that can be saved, regardless the cost. You have heard of living wills, I am sure. I cannot help but wonder if part of the reason for them coming about was as a vehicle for the medical industry to sell do not resuscitate and hospice. They persuade you to sign up for your death bed long before you reach it.
I do not know that we should try to save everyone. Perhaps it is, indeed, too great of an expense. But I clearly believe we ought to save more lives than we do. Maybe there is a point where the expense to the industry is too great. Still, we ought to be ginger about denying anyone life-saving treatment -- regardless the cost.