It's all about the money:
Suppose Grandmother has a living will. It says that if she falls into a vegetative state, like Terri Schiavo did, she wants to be kept alive on a feeding tube. How long? "Until the good Lord takes me away." One terrible day, she is thus stricken, and in goes the feeding tube. OK, who pays for her care?While euthanasia proponents are delighted by living wills that specify to pull the plug, the editorial quoted above asks when an "airtight" will (a person's choice) can be rejected: "what about the people whose end-of-life wishes would drain hundreds of the thousands of dollars from Medicaid to no obvious good end?" Yes, it's all part of the slippery slope...
HT: Pamela
So, you think simply filling out a living will gives you an unlimited claim to any degree of medical resources for any length of time, whether or not you can pay for them? Anyone who is taking care of a patient with a living will is obligated to do so indefinitely, using any applicable resources,whether or not it's doing the patient any good, and at their own expense, simply because the patient has requested it?
In fact, we go far beyond the requirement to pay for your own care: hospitals routinely provide almost unlimited care for patients who can benefit from it, even when they know they will not be reimbursed. But you are demanding a rule that hospitals must do so at their own expense even for vegetating bodies of patients who are long since brain-dead or irrecoverably unconscious. Surely it's reasonable to put some limit on what you can demand from other people's resources?