“Study rebuts idea that Medicare is wasted on the dying,” by James M. Berklan, McKnight’s LTC News

“New findings from a team of academic researchers firmly contradict a widely held theory that Medicare futilely spends too much on seniors in their final year of life. Estimates place final-year-of-life spending at around 25% of all Medicare outlays. Investigators studied records of almost 6 million randomly selected individuals and found that a small portion of that was spent on beneficiaries expected to die within a year. … Researchers found that death is ‘highly unpredictable.’ Less than one in 10 people who die in a year have a predicted one-year mortality rate above 50%, they said. Further, of all people admitted to the hospital in their final year of life, fewer than 4% of them had a one-year mortality rate of 80% or above when admitted.”

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):

Evidently we don’t know who’ll die until they do withholding care from the “dying” would be arbitrary.

Study rebuts idea that Medicare is wasted on the dying

#medicare
#goldencareagent