Thursday, August 5, 2010

Hospice medical care for dying patients : The New Yorker

Hospice medical care for dying patients : The New Yorker

An interesting article - and one which all of us have to face at some point. Regardless of which end of the political spectrum you come from, there is no easy solution: "The subject seems to reach national awareness mainly as a question of who should “win” when the expensive decisions are made: the insurers and the taxpayers footing the bill or the patient battling for his or her life. Budget hawks urge us to face the fact that we can’t afford everything. Demagogues shout about rationing and death panels. Market purists blame the existence of insurance: if patients and families paid the bills themselves, those expensive therapies would all come down in price. But they’re debating the wrong question. The failure of our system of medical care for people facing the end of their life runs much deeper. To see this, you have to get close enough to grapple with the way decisions about care are actually made..."




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