MARCH 5 — A doctor friend on Twitter spoke of an elderly patient who refused chemotherapy, just so he would not burden his children with medical bills.

In a way, I understand his reasoning. Once you near the end of your life, there seems to be no practical reason to prolong it unnecessarily. Why endure rounds of chemotherapy, much intake of medicine and put so much effort into a body that is already edging closer to demise?

And the money. Modern medicine prolongs our lifespan and helps us survive what once would surely kill us but it costs. There are far too many stories of families struggling to feed themselves because medical costs have crippled finances.

But, the doctor noted, the man was still strong enough to endure the chemotherapy and the prognosis was good enough that the treatment would likely fend off the cancer. His was not a terminal diagnosis; he could still be helped, unlike another patient of hers for which modern medicine had no solution, with only months left to the end of his life.

How do we put a price on being able to give a loved one a few more years to live? How do we quantify being able to heal a broken, diseased body and give it a chance to endure?

Life is not fair. Cancer is a malady that goes after the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the clean-living and the wild ones.

What do we do then, about this problem called healthcare costs? Doctors need to be paid, no question about that. We shouldn’t expect them to work for charity when medical training is selective, rigorous and very, very expensive. We want the best doctors, don’t we? 

Everything has a price but there is something fundamentally wrong with us as a society if we allow the decision whether someone deserves to live a little longer rest on the size of his or her bank accounts.

Market forces and healthcare do not mix. The film Elysium paints a future where the rich may stay healthy for as long as their bodies endure while the poor are left to desperation and painful deaths. 

The old man who chose to refuse treatment chose to out of love and consideration for his family. And yet it is a sacrifice that will be hard for his loved ones to endure. To watch him waste away, to stand by helpless as cancer eats at him, how do you measure that kind of pain?

We need to find a way to achieve a baseline for affordable, accessible healthcare. While wealth is something to be worked for, healthcare should be a basic right.

Somewhere, there is an equitable solution. Somehow, we need to find the way to make sure that none of us need to be on a hospital deathbed with our dying thoughts be: “Who’s going to pay for this all?”

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.