Health care: worth it?

This is from an article by the Social Security Advisory Board, entitled "The Unsustainable Cost of Healthcare." It was compiled in September 2009.

"Studies have examined whether increases in medical spending have provided a good value: whether advances in medical care have led to large enough improvements in health and life expectancy to be worth the expense. Harvard health economist David Cutler and his co-authors found that averaging across all ages, increases in medical spending between 1960 and 2000 provided reasonably good value, with an average cost per life-year gained of $19,900.12 For individuals age 65 and over, however, the average cost of adding one more year of life had increased from the 1970s to the 1990s from $46,800 to $145,000. The authors note that their estimates for the 1990s would fail many cost – benefit criteria. Other studies suggest that at current high levels of spending, additional dollars are not improving outcomes."

I think this hits the crux of the health care debate: how much is too much? At what point do we have to throw in the towel, so to say, and accept death as the natural next step in our lives? Is it at the point where another year costs more than we could earn in a decade? Or do we keep on fighting to live, throwing pitchforks full of cash in the burning fire of disease, until technology is exhausted? Is one year of grandma's life worth bankruptcy for her children, who will survive years after her?

For those in the medical field, this has got to be a huge ethical dilemma. Their job is to keep people alive... but sometimes, maybe, it's better to let a person go.