The man is screwed...but I don't have any info about whether the tumor is operable but they won't operate because he can't pay or if they wouldn't operate(able to pay or not) because the tumor is so big and the damage is just too extensive. Sometimes comfort care is the only option but the hospital is just being too hamfisted in it's approach. I know that as an RN, relatives have pleaded with us to try to get mom or sweetheart past the Christmas season...no one wants to remember their relative as having died every time Christmas comes along! Hospital systems need to make adjustments and to realize that it may make fiscal sense in the long run in how they help their patients and patients' families to accept their impending deaths instead of just brutally setting a fiscal "dead"line(sarcasm intended) and enforcing it as though it were a guillotine!
If you read my post above at # 79 about my mother's acute pancreatitis, it is very much as what you described. And while I used the term that her pancreas was "liquefying" her other internal organs, from your post I now recall her doctors using the term "peritonitis" and especially "autodigestion syndrome" in my mother's case.
My mother was however completely unresponsive when her life support was removed but as her birthday was January 7th and was during a major blizzard (and FWIW, my husband volunteered to use his 4WD vehicle to transport doctors and nurses back and forth and did so for nearly 24 hours straight as I sat at my mother's bedside the entire time, sometimes catching a few winks of sleep in a chair and also spending a lot of time talking to the nurses and thanking them for being there and even helping fill in where I could, if only just to stop by and talk to and spend a little time other patients whose family couldn't make it to the hospital) the doctors did not even approach us about removing her life support until several days later, even as by now, I was coming to the realization that she would not live through this. I also recall several of the nurses and some of the doctors actually crying as we, the family despite the major blizzard going on, still all made it to the hospital to be with her and brought her hand made cards from her grand and great grand children and as we all stood at her bedside and all sung her "Happy Birthday."
If this man is indeed terminal and without any reasonable or medically supported hope of recovery; I would agree with the doctors and the hospital with not continuing further treatments or any extraordinary measures and only palliative care and pain relief. But I also agree that while he is still conscious and able to communicate that his life support should not be removed or his eventual death hastened in any way.
I’m sorry for your family’s loss, some causes of death are just idiopathic in nature, just beyond the reach of science to categorize just yet. The use of an autopsy shows integrity on the part of the medical officials involved. Sometimes they find that the cause may very well have been viral in nature,,,I remember a few people over the years getting a flu or having some type of a stomach bug, then they developed diabetes afterward as it seemed their Islet cells had been taken out. Some folks had been healthy, they get a viral syndrome then as that improves their hearts develop slow cardiomyopathy and failure necessitating a transplant if there was one available and if they were a suitable candidate for one. Some folks just reach their due dates and God takes them home!