[maggief]

Q:...where it's $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I've told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she's in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you've got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can't take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you're just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.

I don't know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she's my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they're terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn't have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

(snip)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

LINK

[Girlene]

It sounds like the President and congressman Keith Ellison are on the same page on this issue. If people just had professionsl/a panel/whatever to guide them, they might not get caught in a "guilt trap" with family end-of-life issues. From Ellison Confronted at Town Hall

..............."WOMAN: My dad has been diagnosed with an acute leukemia. He's got a 15% chance of survival, he spent a month-and-a-half inpatient at Mayo, and we might lose the family farm. But I'm here to tell you that the chemo drug that he is on now that may save his life is illegal in Norway, it is not available in Great Britain. The visit is expensive. And, you know what, the worst thing that can happen to you when you have a health crisis is not bankruptcy; it's death. And I would rather that we lose the family farm and keep my dad alive. (cheers and applause) ;snip]

ELLISON: We ought to all have a conversation with our loved ones, not about money, but about dignity. So what the bill says, what it calls for is that you have a conversation with your provider and encouraged to have a conversation with your family about things like living will, do not resuscitate, things like that. Now look, it happens to be true that a lot of expense is in end-of-life care, but some of that expense is associated with the fact that the family is in a guilt trap because they don't know -- they want to do everything they can to save Dad or Mom.

RUSH: End-of-health care costs result from a guilt trap. This is really amazing. Obama is going to cut costs by removing the guilt trap that family members feel. You won't have to treat your dying parents out of guilt anymore. They'll just take the pain pill. "