Although a vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries desire care options that enhance the quality of life in the advanced stage of a terminal illness, Medicare does not ensure that doctors understand patients’ choices and follow them. As a result, the default standard is the exhaustion of all possible medical services, at great personal expense and discomfort to many patients and financial expense to the Medicare program.
Patients might instead prefer hospice care or want to instruct their caregivers not to resuscitate them. Medicare should provide patients the counseling and tools they need, such as advance directives and physician’s orders for life sustaining treatment. Instead of “death panels,” which were controversial during the health-care reform debate, this approach focuses on empowering patients so they can get the care they want and need.
