Boomers Want Control of Their End-of-Life Care
Assisted suicide. Euthanasia. Death panels. Rationed health care.
There’s nothing like a well-chosen phrase to inflame talk about end-of-life care -- how the health-care system cares for those who are in the last stages of a terminal illness and how much control patients and their families have over that process.
It can be an emotional and divisive issue, and for lawmakers, a dangerous business. That’s certainly something President Obama quickly learned when a provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that encouraged doctors to engage patients in discussions about end-of-life care quickly deteriorated into a nationwide war of words over whether such one-on-one discussions between patient and physician would result in “death panels” determining who should receive care.
States Seek to Keep Seniors Out of Nursing Homes
For three years, Delores Powers languished in a nursing home. Already struggling with diabetes and early dementia, the 86-year-old Decherd, Tenn., resident landed in the hospital in 2008 after mismanaging the dozen or so medications she takes every day. Doctors told Delores’ son David and his wife Dale that unless somebody could stay with her all day, she needed to live in a nursing home. Both David and Dale work full time, so staying home was not an option. Delores was moved to a nursing home, the default option for someone in her situation.
“She seemed to be going downhill, picking up speed,” says Dale of how her mother-in-law handled the move. She recalls the conversations she and her husband had about what they could do. They talked about Dale quitting her job to stay home with Delores. “But we really couldn’t afford that.”
Then, a few years ago, Tennessee lawmakers approved a new program called CHOICES. Implemented in 2010, the program was conceived as a way to help seniors on Medicaid receive home- and community-based...
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