People won't live forever if they stop smoking.
I've just lived through both my mother-in-law (Age 86) and my dad (age 94) dying earlier this year. Both were in nursing homes, one for 3 years and the other for less than 2. My MiL took a year and a half to die. She was hospitalized five times and Medicare paid all of it. In that last year they spent well over $500,000 to "give" her she lost 1/3 of her body weight and ended up blind, demented and paralyzed. She finally said she'd did not want to go to a hospital again and they put her on hospice where she finally died peacefully.
My dad had Alzheimers, but he still knew who everyone was and had a whole bunch of buddies at the nursing home that he hung out with. The week after my MiL died he developed shortness of breath and was dead two weeks later.
He definitely picked the better way to do it.
If the recent health care debate over here showed anything it was that Medicare is going broke providing end-of-life care which does nothing but enrich the medical establishment without having any chance to alter the ultimate outcome. There are no easy answers to this issue and that's tough because if ever people want an easy answer it is here.
But no matter when it happens the costs have to be paid eventually.
I've just lived through both my mother-in-law (Age 86) and my dad (age 94) dying earlier this year. Both were in nursing homes, one for 3 years and the other for less than 2. My MiL took a year and a half to die. She was hospitalized five times and Medicare paid all of it. In that last year they spent well over $500,000 to "give" her she lost 1/3 of her body weight and ended up blind, demented and paralyzed. She finally said she'd did not want to go to a hospital again and they put her on hospice where she finally died peacefully.
My dad had Alzheimers, but he still knew who everyone was and had a whole bunch of buddies at the nursing home that he hung out with. The week after my MiL died he developed shortness of breath and was dead two weeks later.
He definitely picked the better way to do it.
If the recent health care debate over here showed anything it was that Medicare is going broke providing end-of-life care which does nothing but enrich the medical establishment without having any chance to alter the ultimate outcome. There are no easy answers to this issue and that's tough because if ever people want an easy answer it is here.
But no matter when it happens the costs have to be paid eventually.
