{"id":199031,"date":"2019-03-26T07:02:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T12:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=199031"},"modified":"2019-03-26T01:12:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T06:12:47","slug":"dutch-legislator-doctors-deny-surgery-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/dutch-legislator-doctors-deny-surgery-70\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch legislator: Let doctors deny surgeries to patients older than 70"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

(Life Site News<\/a>)\u00a0A Dutch environmentalist legislator has suggested restricting surgeries for patients older than age 70 by allowing hospital geriatricians to decide whether or not to operate and continue to provide treatment.<\/p>\n

Corinne Ellemeet of Groenlinks (the Green Left) made the proposal in February and recently presented it in the Lower Chamber of the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

In technically advanced countries, 70 is not exactly equivalent to \u201cold age.\u201d In the Netherlands, people born after 1955 will only receive a state pension when they are 67 years and 3 months old. This limit is expected to rise to 70 as the population ages. Life expectancy is slightly above 81.<\/p>\n

Ellemeet insisted that she is only interested in giving the elderly the best possible care.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about saving money,\u201d she said, but about avoiding \u201covertreatment,\u201d because operations are not always beneficial and can even put undue strain on the patient.<\/p>\n

However, the logic of her proposal is based on cost-effectiveness. She underscored that 70 percent of patients in Dutch hospitals are over 70, suggesting they should not receive the same treatment as younger patients as a matter of course. A screening process should be put into place when advanced and costly treatment is under consideration, she said \u2013\u00a0including heart operations, cancer treatment, kidney dialysis and the like.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe central issue is this: What are we doing to the patient? Hospitalization, anesthesia, pain, and a deluge of drugs. Research shows overtreatment of elderly patients is still an everyday occurrence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0What we\u2019ve learned from two decades of euthanasia in the Netherlands<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In concrete terms, the patient\u2019s will to go on living and fighting would no longer play the determining role, but a geriatrician\u2019s opinion on what the patient\u2019s quality of life expectations would be. Stopping treatment would amount to \u201cadding to the patient\u2019s quality of life,\u201d explained Hanna Willem, president of the Dutch association of Clinical Geriatrics, who supports Ellemeet\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n

Last September, a study in the Netherlands found that over 65s account for one half of all health costs in the country. In 2017, care for the elderly amounted to 28 billion euro (about $31.5 billion US), equivalent to 8,650 euro (almost $10,000 US) per person. One in five persons is over 65 in the Netherlands, or a total of nearly 3.3 million souls. By 2030, the proportion is expected to reach one in\u00a0four. Nearly 2,000 people are 100 or older.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the issue is a social and political one.<\/p>\n

Ellemeert\u2019s suggestion sparked some criticism in the Netherlands and also in neighboring Belgium, where the French-speaking daily Le Soir<\/em>published a series of articles last Tuesday citing a \u201crecent\u201d study about public acceptance of health care savings. Clearly, her ideas are gaining traction in the general population.<\/p>\n

More than 40 percent of Belgians favor abstaining from giving a cardiac device to patients over 85, according to the study by the federal center for healthcare expertise (KCE). Almost as many \u2013 37.1 percent \u2013 agree that to save social security money it would be \u201cacceptable\u201d to stop offering vital but costly treatment to prolong the life of over 85s.<\/p>\n

On the last point, less than 35.2 percent think such costly treatments should be administered and 27.7 percent neither agree nor disagree.<\/p>\n

Le Soir <\/em>commented the results of the study, which involved a lengthy questionnaire presented to 6.000 Belgian nationals in 2013. The 2014 study was kept \u201csecret,\u201d according to the news source.<\/p>\n

The left-wing Parisian daily Lib\u00e9ration<\/em> has shown that this was not the case: the KCE study was in fact mentioned in a short report by Belga, the Belgian press agency in 2014, when it was published. The report was picked up in a brief article in a Flemish paper and was available on the site of INAMI, the Belgian social security. But, at any rate, it was \u201cdiscreet.\u201d And it certainly sheds light on what can happen in the near future in countries where public opinion appears to be nearly ready to accept rationing of health care on a quality of life basis.<\/p>\n

In its highly visible report, Le Soir<\/em> commented: \u201cWe can guess where that will lead: we\u2019d soon have two-tiered medical care, with on the one side patients who would have to make do with social security and on the other those who are rich enough to pay themselves for unreimbursed drugs or costly operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Euthanasia advocates now propose killing patients by organ donation<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Flemish Dutch-speaking panelists were more inclined to approve the refusal of costly care to the elderly than the French-speaking Walloon. The divide may have something to do with the fact that euthanasia is more frequent in Flanders than in Wallonia.<\/p>\n

Le\u00a0Soir<\/em> added that in the neighboring Netherlands, patients over 75 no longer get pacemaker implants because of their age. This is in fact not a general rule, but it is true that a number of operations \u2013 including hip replacement after a fracture and the placing of cardiac stimulators \u2013 are only performed after an assessment of the patient\u2019s general condition, life expectancy, existing dementia, and so forth. In such societies, where euthanasia is widely considered to be acceptable, this can be seen as a way of managing the rising costs of healthcare for a rapidly aging general population.<\/p>\n

A representative of the INAMI (the Belgian social security) that ordered the report, called the results \u201cshocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The predominantly left-wing mainstream Belgian and French press also appeared shocked at the results. Lib\u00e9ration <\/em>wrote: \u201cThe fact that it dates back five years and was not in fact a secret does not take anything away from the information \u2013 quite chilling information if the study is correct \u2013 that more than one Belgian out of three should be, or was, prepared to reduce care for the elderly to save money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: This article was published at Life Site News<\/a> and is reprinted here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Life Site News)\u00a0A Dutch environmentalist legislator has suggested restricting surgeries for patients older than age 70 by allowing hospital geriatricians to decide whether or not to operate and continue to provide treatment. Corinne Ellemeet of Groenlinks (the Green Left) made the proposal in February and recently presented it in the Lower Chamber of the Netherlands. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":626,"featured_media":192788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077,7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDutch legislator: Let doctors deny surgeries to patients older than 70<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In societies where euthanasia is widely accepted, this can be seen as a way of managing rising healthcare costs for a rapidly aging general population.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/dutch-legislator-doctors-deny-surgery-70\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dutch legislator: Let doctors deny surgeries to patients older than 70\" \/>\n<meta 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