Expensive taxpayer-funded healthcare should not continue to prolong life for the elderly while their quality of life crumbles, Dr John Graham told an event at the Centre for Independent Studies last night.
A former consultant physician and former Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Sydney Hospital and Sydney Eye Hospital, Dr Graham said a comfortable and natural death was far preferable to medical intervention that extends life but does nothing to prevent the loss of quality of life caused by incurable conditions such as dementia.
He added that money currently being wasted on ineffective preventative healthcare programs could be channelled into crucial medical science such as cures for dementia and macular degeneration.
“It’s important to remember that no doctor can keep any patient alive forever,” Dr Graham said. “Given that mortality is inevitable, any caring doctor should try to ensure that all preventions and attempted cures are worthwhile.
“Costs versus benefits need to be assessed. Are we achieving desirable outcomes of enabling human productivity and enjoyment of living?”
Dr Graham cited a 2013 report in the New England Journal of Medicine that estimated prevalence in 2010 of dementia in persons in the United States who were older than 70 was 14.7%.
“Women are more prone than men to dementia by a factor of 3 to 2. The monetary cost per person that was attributable to dementia in the US in 2010 was in the range of US$41-US$56,000 and the cost for the United States as a whole in that year was estimated between $157 and $215 billion…and that is just the financial cost, that doesn’t even look at the emotional cost of having a family member with dementia.
“The spending of $872 million by the Australian government on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency since 2009, in my view represents a monumental waste of money that could have been spent on research into cures and preventions of many of the serious disorders that doctors have to manage.
“The spending of so much money on assessing performance targets and dreaming up useless preventive health goals has been very wasteful.”
A full copy of Dr Graham’s address is available on request.