ocrenter, good article! I did not see the show. From reading it, I gathered that hospitals have no qualms about keeping a terminally ill patient (with no advance directive) in ICU at an average cost of $10K per day, partly to cover their a$$es and partly to keep afloat and pay off their bonds.
I don’t know about how much Medicare allows for hospice but I have had younger relatives on health plans that only allowed $10K for hospice. They both went into hospice when death was absolutely imminent because they did not want to burden their families with uncovered bills for months of hospice care (home or institutional). If the insurance industry upped the “hospice” benefit to say, $30K or $50K, I think more terminally ill people (ineligible for Medicare) would choose to go home and make themselves comfortable in their last weeks/months instead of go thru extra useless treatments and days/weeks in the hospital. Don’t quote me but I believe the cost of home hospice care is around $4K to $7K per month, depending on locale.
This is certainly preferable and a lot cheaper for taxpayers.
