Humans, along with all life forms, must experience death and the impact of death around them. Given this fact, Atul Gawande, surgeon and author, discusses the controversial views of prolonging human life facing death of modern medical science in his book Being Mortal. In medical school, Gawande contemplates there is a detrimental flaw in the medical philosophy of saving lives through the story of Ivan Ilyich, a man dying after a fall, but suffering more from the extensive treatments, “As we medical students saw it, the failure of those around Ivan Ilyich to offer comfort or to acknowledge what was happening to him was a failure of character and culture”(2). This means that the medical field, which mirrors today's, fails to recognize the needs…show more content… Gawande himself writes, “The soaring cost of health care has become the greatest threat to the long-term solvency of most advanced nations, and the incurable account for a lot of it. In the United States, 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the 5 percent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months that is of little apparent benefit” (153). During the last months of life, medical expenses and care costs are extremely high in order to prolong the life of someone who might not even benefit from your efforts. Given that our elderly population is rising, putting this financial pressure of the expectation of a prolonged life on healthcare will eventually lead to the system becoming unsustainable. After your insurance has been exhausted, paying for the best treatment could allow Medicare to take any money you were planning on giving to your children to merely prolong the inevitable. With the focus of assisted suicide through hospice for death-bound patients, financial pressure would be relieved on many families and the healthcare system, lowering the cost for
