A doctor's duty is to care for a patient and to prolong their life as long as they can. But, doctors can only do so much until a patient needs to be on life support. Life support is a machine that helps keep people alive who can't survive on their own. It helps all of their organs function, helps their heartbeat, and lungs pumping. A lot of ill patients today rely on it to live. Some people today call it a miracle, because without it patients may die. Every hospital throughout the world uses it. It is very common. The ill patients loved ones today have difficulty deciding whether they would like to take their loved ones off life support or keeping them on. There are loved ones who do not want to face the fact that their loved ones are pretty much brain dead. When doctors put their opinion in saying it would be time to pull the plug, family members can disagree and not let them go through with it. There have been some cases that families will go to court and fight to keep their loved one alive. This machine is becoming overused in today's society. A lot of people take advantage of it. Life support can waste the hospitals money and time. Patients who are on the life support are basically dead without any hope of waking up. Also, families grieving process can drag on for a really long time. Only in certain cases should life support be used, such as if the patient actually has a high chance of pulling through and living. It can give a lot of families and friends false hope. The use of life support should not be used as much as it is.
Hospitals spend a lot of time and money on these patients on life support. Ira Byock, a doctor in New Hampshire, explained how much money their hospital spends on each patient on life support. Each patient everyday costs about $10,000 just to keep the machine running (Court 1). Insurance companies do have maximum amount of dollars they can spend on each patient, and when they reach that amount, the families have to start paying out of their own pocket for the medicine needed.
