Why one prominent doctor (Dr. Ezekial Emmanuel) says, "I hope to die at 75"

[MADem]

41. I know people in their nineties who are sharper than I was in my thirties, forties and fifties.

Look, I don't argue that anyone suffering a debilitating illness might want to cut it short, but absent that, I say keep on trucking. Would you like an arbitrary date to be "cut off" from hospital access? To be told "Hey, your time is up--step aside?"

People who are accepting of an upper age limit of seventy five (like this guy) might be told, down the line, that they're "cut off" at age seventy instead. Before we know it, by the time we're eligible for social security they'll be lining us up for the firing squad.

I don't think the only issue is healthcare rationing, I just think that will inevitably be a BIG piece that is brought into the conversation. "Hey, you're too old--you don't need that new hip--use this wheelchair, it's cheaper and you'll only be around a few more years, anyway..." That kind of thing.

If healthcare is rationed in a sufficiently aggressive manner, euthanasia becomes an academic exercise, too--you'll die of that pneumonia before anything else!