How To Screw Up Hospice Care: a Government Primer
You can always be sure that if a program or medical movement is going really well, our government will find some way to screw it up. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have done themselves proud this time. In spring they decided to cut back on Medicare reimbursements for hospices across the nation.
What this means of course is that hospice care, one of the few truly effective health care options for the dying, will be dramatically slashed over time. Reduce reimbursements from Medicare, and patients and their families will get reduced services. Or maybe, if our government is really successful in its latest mission, no services at all.
The pity of it all is that aside from being a compassionate, time-tested and highly successful way of caring for the terminally ill, hospices happen to be cost-effective. Money thrown at useless or painful life-prolonging procedures is instead spent on reducing pain and enhancing comfort for patients in their last months of life.
So why the government has chosen slim down hospice care instead of, say, trimming the billions we waste on a peculiar war in Iraq, is anyone’s guess. Outraged, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization took the unusual and very dramatic step last week of launching a lawsuit against Medicare and the Department of Health and Human Services.
It’s not only a hospice rebellion, however. It’s a citizens’ revolt. And about time. These government encroachments on hospice care could impact you and anyone you love. Write your congressional representative. Tell them just what you think.
