Those of us who have had a short experience of the sort of longer term situation Sunfish described can only thank our lucky stars that we were fortunate enough to avoid the long term dramas of remote medical treatment. How much more dreadful must be the experience when the timeframe is far longer ?
Perhaps those who have had no exposure at all are not in a very strong position to advocate on the philosophical rights and wrongs of things ? Something about walking a mile in their moccasins, perhaps ?
As to PIC command decision calls, it is very easy for those of us with significant flying experience VFR/IFR to suggest what we might do in the light of that historical experience, given a particular situation. More importantly, we have the benefit of all those frights to which we subjected ourselves while acquiring the experience ...
Perhaps folks might cast their minds back to their time during that high-risk 100-500 hours period. Does the fact that Pilot A kills himself while Pilot B doesn't, mean that Pilot A is a lesser pilot ? Perhaps more that Pilot B might have been just a little bit luckier. I recall a double fatality in the Blue Mountains many years ago - one of the young chaps was the son of a childhood friend. The two of them, apparently, survived the prang but succumbed to injuries subsequently. Probably not in the same valley, with the same lowering cloud base but, quite some years earlier at a similar experience level, I very nearly came unstuck in a very similar manner - on that occasion, I was lucky. Come to think of it, on many occasions, I was lucky .. until I wised up a bit.
Perhaps the emphasis ought to be not on castigation but, rather, lift the bar on basic pilot training to give the new chums some supervised exposure so that they can have a few programmed frights with a better controlled risk ?