I can’t resist. My friend Josh Slocum, the brilliant head of the consumer-friendly Funeral Consumers Alliance (www.funerals.com ), has written a wise and sensible blog on mapping out — or rather not mapping out — your own funeral. And I couldn’t resist borrowing it today. Here’s what Josh has to say:
“In my experience. those who [...]
I don’t always tout my own thoughts (well not every week, anyway) — but I do think all the readers of www.thecheckoutline.org should read what I wrote today for www.obit-mag.com
It’s called “Gouging Doctors: A Defense Strategy” — and although pretty self-explanatory, it’s basically a how-to manual on how to defend ourselves and those we love from outrageous fees, rude [...]
The Journal of Palliative Medicine reports that terminally ill patients “more than doubled their use of hospice care” when they had insurance that paid for extensive hospice care.
This was especially true, according to an Aetna study when insurance benefits were expanded (read: “when insurance companies actually coughed up more for hospice services”) and lots of informed nurse [...]
About once every week, I get an email from a checkoutline.org visitor who wants to know how little one can pay to get a great (or at least a passable) send-off.
What, in other words, does a funeral cost — if cost is an issue? And these days it seems cost is a big issue. And [...]
Dear Readers,
As all of you likely know, Sen. Ted Kennedy died today. What did not die, I hope, were his dreams for universal health care in this country.
You can read my obituary of Kennedy at www.obit-mag.com
And you can ensure your own future and the future of this country’s children by writing your representatives and telling [...]
Where did President Obama get the (good) idea to offer the elderly an every-5-year consultation with a family doctor about end of life care in our proposed health reform bill?
From the Netherlands and from Germany, among other countries. All over Europe — just like in the US — people are deciding, while they’re still healthy, what they [...]
Let’s say you’re really old. Or you’re really ill. And you want to discuss end-of-life care with your doctor.
What do you do?
Make an appointment? Phone and ask to speak to your physician? (Good luck…)
Wing it, without a doctor’s help or advice?
Well Section 1233 of the new proposed health care bill drafted by the House of [...]
Usually, as readers of www.thecheckoutline.org already know, we deal with the issues of either death — and how it affects us — or terminal illness, and how to deal with that in an intelligent, common sense way.
But the other day, I got contacted by representatives of Dr Erika Schwartz, a highly intelligent (and funny) longtime internist who [...]
The question on everyone’s minds who watches the network news or reads the newspapers is — What is Dignitas?
A lot of us (even those in the field of dying) had never heard of Dignitas which is, as it turns out, a clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, run by a group engaged in assisted suicide.
And none of [...]
Worrying about what ecologically corrrect materials to get buried in? Possibly you should! As the AP reports, the latest fad, among the ecologically-minded, is banana sheaf.
That’s right. We all know nobody in his right mind (that’s you I’m sure!) is anxious to purchase a bronze casket inlaid with pink satin for a final rest. That kind [...]
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Posted on January 24th, 2009