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Making the Case for Talking to Patients about the Costs of End-of-Life Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Greer Donley  and
Marion Danis
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Extract

The cost of health care at the end of life accounts for a high proportion of total health care costs in the United States. The percentage of Medicare payments attributable to patients in their last year of life was 28.3% in 1978 and has remained substantially the same at 25.1% in 2006. This indicates how little progress has been made in containing these costs, though doing so will be important to promote a financially sustainable health care system. These expenditures also highlight the prospect that efforts to reduce health care costs overall are likely to disproportionately affect the care patients receive at the end of life.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 183 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2011

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