[the808bass]

Hospice companies are paid on a per diem rate. The longer the patient lives, the more money the company makes. Hospice companies, especially for-profit ones, are incentivized to keep their patients alive.

If your loved one has COPD, is 83 and is being admitted to the hospital for the 4th time in 6 months, should heroic life-saving measures be considered appropriate or simply delaying the inevitable?

Finally, there are studies that show patients who are on hospice actually live longer than patients with similar prognoses not on hospice.

Lots of uninformed nonsense in this thread.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

So had did that incentivized hospice thing work out for Terri Schiavo?

[Brian Kopp DPM]

If your loved one has COPD, is 83 and is being admitted to the hospital for the 4th time in 6 months, should heroic life-saving measures be considered appropriate or simply delaying the inevitable?

Inevitable?

My dad is 76, smoked for 40 years, has COPD, and is on oxygen 24/7. He had 7 admissions in 9 months, and the doctors told him he had only 3 to 6 months to live.

That was twelve months ago.

And he has had no admissions since, and is in the process or retaking his driver's license, which he let lapse when the doctors told him he was "terminal."

I get real jaundiced towards people who throw around charges over the appropriateness of "heroic" life saving measures and "simply delaying the inevitable." You know what I'm saying?