The Cost of Dying: End-of-Life Care

The Cost of Dying: End-of-Life Care - 60 Minutes - CBS News: 'Often the best care is saying 'Let's see how you do on this particular treatment for a couple of days. And see if you respond.' Not necessarily doing a lot of tests,' Dr. Elliott Fisher, a researcher at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy, said. 'The best care may well be staying home with a trial of a new medication, rather than being admitted to a hospital where you can be exposed to a hospital-acquired infection. We have a system that rewards much, much more care.'

In almost every business, cost-conscious customers and consumers help keep prices down. But not with health care. That's because the customers and consumers who are receiving the care aren't the ones paying the bill.

By law, Medicare cannot reject any treatment based upon cost. It will pay $55,000 for patients with advanced breast cancer to receive the chemotherapy drug Avastin, even though it extends life only an average of a month and a half; it will pay $40,000 for a 93-year-old man with terminal cancer to get a surgically implanted defibrillator if he happens to have heart problems too.

After analyzing Medicare records for end-of-life treatment, Fisher is convinced that there is so much waste in the present system that if it were eliminated there would be no need to ration beneficial care to anyone. Multiple studies have concluded that most patients and their families are not even familiar with end-of-life options and things like living wills, home hospice and pain management.