The death of one person often affects many people around them. The grief of losing someone close to us is immeasurable. Unfortunately, the physical cost of dying is measurable and the numbers are staggering. As if losing a loved one was not hard enough, many people are also crippled by the fact that dying is expensive. Medicare beneficiaries have noted that payments for dying patients increase exponentially as they approach the end. Payments during the last month of life make up for roughly 40 percent of payments during the last year of life (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1994). The cost of dying is not inexpensive.
There are various reasons why medical bills increase drastically toward the end of life. For the elderly, it is not uncommon to develop disease or other physiological disabilities. Many older patients end up on life support before they pass. However, more and more Americans are opting out of keeping their loved ones on life support if their disease is irreversible. If this is the case, family members could simultaneously respect the patient’s self autonomy and save billions of dollars in medical costs (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1994). It is sad to know that people feel the need to take someone off of life support because they cannot afford to keep the machines running. However, I do believe it can be best for everyone to stop life support if there is no hope that the patient will get better.
Dying is a very different experience for someone spending their final days in a hospital as opposed to dying in their home. Hospice patients are those who are treated at home. Many hospice patients refuse life-sustaining interventions so, of course, they do not utilize high technology interventions at the end of life (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1994). A series of studies have compared hospice care with traditional care of terminally ill patients, which usually involves multiple hospital visits. It was estimated that hospice care saves between 31 and 64 percent of medical care costs (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1994) .
A controversial issue surrounding the cost of dying is to reduce futile care. Futile care refers to cardiopulmonary resuscitation for patients dying of cancer. Although there is not any solid evidence to prove that patient’s with do-not-resuscitate orders save any more money that those without do-not-resuscitate orders (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1994). The idea is that it costs more money to keep people alive, but futile care is not a clear example of why this is true. Thus, the issue remains controversial.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a ‘cheap’ way to let someone go. Medical expenses will always be high when someone is fighting an illness toward the end of their life. Even when patients’ choose to stay at home as opposed to making numerous trips to the hospital, there will significant expenses in order to keep the patient alive. Even though dying will never be convenient or cost effective, we should never stop caring for the people we love by providing them with all the medical needs they may require. Hopefully there will come a time in the future where we are able to grieve over the loss of a loved one without having to consider the economic burden that accompanies death.
Works Referenced:
Emanuel, E. (1994). New england journal of medicine. Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199402243300806
Aging On The Inside 