”Why is Medicare considering lowering the reimbursement rates for hospice care?” a reader just wrote in yesterday. “I realize that hospice is the fastest growing segment of the Medicare program, but the number of dying Americans is not going down.“
That is correct. People in the United States are still dying – roughly at the rate of 2.5 million a year — but our government appears to believe that in the last few months somehow or other immortality has descended on the national population. How else to account for the government’s proposed $2.29 billion cuts in Medicare reimbursements for hospice care?
Medicare is in a big hurry, apparently, to make sure we don’t die comfortably. It would like these cuts to start July 1.
Who would these cuts affect? From what I can tell — just about everybody, but especially Boomers who, whatever their youthful prejudices might once have been on the subject, are now actually aging. In fact within relatively short order, a lot of them will get old. And that’s something to remember because 82 percent of hospice patients are over 65. What this means is that the demand for hospice care is increasing.
Two years back, 1.3 million Americans used hospice care. Most died at home, tended by hospice professionals and volunteers. The rest died in hospices, where not only terminally ill patients but their families and close friends received help and comfort.
Is hospice care a big Medicare expense? Yes, it is. Four years ago the government forked out more than $6 billion on the dying. But guess what’s more expensive — and more painful and useless and humiliating? Extended hospitalizations and tests and procedures for those who no longer can benefit from them.
Ours is a government that likes to engage in hopeless wars. Maybe now is the time for the rest of us to engage in a war on behalf of the hopeless. Email or write your representative using the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization site. Flood Medicare with letters — address them to Mike Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services who is responsible for this outrage.0 Don’t let them get away with this.
Thanks, Judy, for responding to my question. I agree totally with you…This country spends more money on futile medical treatment at the end of life than the amount that could ever be spent for hospice care. I am wirting my ‘friends’ in government today!!!!!!!!!!