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Per this Reuters report:
If half of the estimated 566,000 American adult cancer patients who died in 2008 had the end-of-life discussion, the projected savings would conservatively be $77 million, according to a report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
U.S. policymakers are hoping to find ways to rein in soaring healthcare costs, and researchers said end-of-life care merits a close look.
The one in 20 Medicare patients who die each year use up almost one-third of expenditures by Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.
One third of expenses in the last year of life are spent in the final month, according to the report, with aggressive treatments in the final month accounting for 80 percent of those costs.
WASTE OF MONEY
"This is a waste of money … The real cost differences could be substantial," said Holly Prigerson of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard, who helped perform the study.
The researchers interviewed 603 terminally ill cancer patients and estimated conservatively that those who spoke with their doctors about end-of-life care incurred $1,876 in medical costs in their final week of life, compared to $2,917 for those who did not.
The United States spends over $7000/year per man, woman, and child on healthcare, and we’re quibbling about $1000 in the last week of their lives!? And we’re wanting to have a conversation with them in their final week to tell them how to die less expensively!? Call me a "deather," but IMHO that’s fucking twisted.
I can understand Republicans thinking that way; we know they’d do anything to save a tax dollar including asking the dying to die less expensively. And I can understand insurance companies doing such shit; they’d do anything to cut what they call "medical losses." So, why are liberals taking the heat for this? Why aren’t we pointing the finger the other way?
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Reuters did not give the whole story. Religious people are the ones who cost too much.
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” In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that those who draw on religion to cope with their illness are more likely to receive intensive, life-prolonging medical care as death approaches –– treatment that often entails a lower quality of life in patients’ final days.
Previous research has shown that more religious patients often prefer aggressive end-of-life (EOL) treatment. The new study –– to be published in the March 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association –– examined whether these patients actually receive such care. The study’s findings suggest that physicians tend to comply with religious patients’ wishes for more aggressive care. “
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_…..031609.php
I can readily understand why many religious folks, e.g., the residents of C-Street House, would be reluctant to meet their maker. But then, of course, they should pay higher premiums and be given additional death-with-dignity counseling.
You mean the fear of finding out for sure that money and power are not really god?..’g’. The only god they truly worshipped all of their lives is a fake?
Wow, that report is disturbing.
Something just doesn’t make sense for me about those numbers. 3K dollars for the final week of a terminal cancer patient? There had to be no heroic measures performed. Pain medications, IVs, intensive nursing? All these things are costly. Two years ago I spent not quite three days in the hospital for bleeding due to acid reflux and the bill came to $23,000 and some change. For infos sake I did not have health insurance at the time. I still don’t for that matter.
This whole senior scarefest is indeed deeply disturbing. Can we just close some of our 761 military bases in 150 countries instead of making somebody’s last week whatever they want it to be?
We are such a f**ked up nation. Other countries honor their elderly but we try to find ways of dumping them or turning them into food sources.
I saw an updated number yesterday from Chalmers Johnson that had this updated information:
The Senior fright trip has had great effect! The infamous Page 425 e mail has the Regressive’s bowels in a collective uproar. They weren’t even mollified when I pointed out they were far too bitter to render into decent Soylent Green. Many of these people have no Living Will or End of Life Directives. The entirety of the page addresses that particular issue to my admittedly layman’s eyes.
Chalmers Johnson link