The Pathological Altruist

[tapu]

Originally Posted by ElijahRene

I think this is how we, as a society, have come to operate...we want X, but have no logical way to make X happen. And no one wants to make the hard decisions, so we just ignore realities and think about kittens.

Your remark above and the anecdote in the article regarding medical care capture where we are with medicine today. And with who pays for medicine today, which of course leads into the thorny matters regarding medical insurance and coverage for all.

Basically, people want 21st century medicine at 1960s prices. But really there is just no way to pull the stops out for everyone's treatment. Talk about hard decisions. I think those decisions will be forced, and soon. But how will we decide who gets advanced treatment? And if medically you don't qualify for it, will we let you buy it?

As for the lifeboat thing, I'd stick to the 1000. Unless I was number 1001.

Good topic, ElijahRenee. Thank you. --the tapu

[Slater]

I think it is an interesting proposition, but the article, and possibly the book it is named after, badly misuses the word altruism. Few of the examples cited come anywhere near actual altruism. I think the article would be better called "Unhelpful Helping" or something like that. For instance, the anecdote with the oncologist looks a lot more like hubris than altruism. Basically that example amounts to a doctor who was so arrogant that he ignored his patients, their families, his colleagues and medical science in favor of his own inflated notions of his abilities. There is not a sniff of altruism in there.

Based on the article I'm not persuaded that pathological altruism is actually much of a phenomenon at all. Unhelpful helping, or whatever? Definitely. And also I think ElijahRene's initial point about people being unwilling to make hard decisions, unwilling often to even acknowledge that hard decisions need to be made, is a valid one and I think it would be interesting to try to unpack that and see where it comes from. I just don't think the article sheds any light on it.

Some of this stems from the relatively smooth lives of (especially) the middle class and above portions of our society. We expect things to work because they usually do. We expect to be protected because we usually are. Most of us don't face life-or-death choices all that often so we may be slow to really recognize or accept when we are facing one.

I also think part of it is that we have become a culture that expects miracles. I think odds-defying occurances are over-emphasized and perhaps spun by the media to make them seem even more miraculous than they are.

So the person who tries to cram 2000 people into lifeboats for 1000 may believe it will be okay because manufacturers often put artifically low limits on their products to guard against liability. Or they think they heard of this time when a rubber raft was way over capacity but it made it from Cuba to Florida, or whatever.

It think it is a different phenomenon than the unhelpful helping, though at times they may cross paths.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by tapu

Your remark above and the anecdote in the article regarding medical care capture where we are with medicine today. And with who pays for medicine today, which of course leads into the thorny matters regarding medical insurance and coverage for all.

Basically, people want 21st century medicine at 1960s prices. But really there is just no way to pull the stops out for everyone's treatment. Talk about hard decisions. I think those decisions will be forced, and soon. But how will we decide who gets advanced treatment? And if medically you don't qualify for it, will we let you buy it?

As for the lifeboat thing, I'd stick to the 1000. Unless I was number 1001.

Good topic, ElijahRenee. Thank you. --the tapu

I agree with most of what you are saying. And yes, we need to understand just how expensive medical care is. However, so much is inflated by public entity health care provider corporations that not only want to gain a profit on the services, but also for their stockholders. This is over and above what the actual costs are. Yes, a corporation has to cover all od its costs including wages and benefits for its employees, but CEO's of some of our healthcare providers in the US take home 5-7 million in salary plus bonuses of a couple of million. Above that, millions go into dividends to stockholders.

One very good reason to get heathcare under a single-payer, public structure. And the very core of why these corporations have many lobbyists working for them in Washington DC.

The other side to this has to do with technological advances that are really quite phenomenal. But, also are costly from the the idea of a bright scientist through clinical trials, actually building the machines (ie., scanners), training those who can run them up to clinics and hospitals being able to afford them.