Newsweek's cover story on Sept. 21, 2009, "The Case for Killing Granny," published at the heights of the debate over the Obama health care bill, argued that "the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate." Politicians pressing for "reform" frequently implied that money was being poured into treatments for dying patients who would not benefit.
Numerous studies prove that this is generally false. In 2006, Emory University researchers examining the records of patients in the year before they died found that doctor spend far less on patients who are expected to die than on patients expected to survive.
The Emory researchers said it's untrue that "lifesaving measure for patients visibly near death account for a disproportionate share of spending." They also found that doctors often can't predict when a patient is in the last year of life. The most expensive patients are those who showed every sign of being able to recover and then didn't.
In any case, the Obama health law's across-the-board reductions in funding for Medicare won't simply reduce end-of-life care; they will also reduce care for patients who are perfectly capable of surviving their illnesses and going on with life.
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