Question 10:  Will you put financial limits on your terminal care?

     A large part of your life-time medical expenses
will be paid out in the last year of your life.
Usually it would be much better for you
to spend the same amount of money earlier in your life.
Put your medical-care dollars into the prime of your life
rather than spending wildly at the end
in a desperate attempt to extend what is probably a poor quality of life.

     At present there are few limits on the cost of terminal care.
Whoever is paying just continues to pay out
whatever is needed to cover all possible medical interventions.
The doctors who are ordering these medical treatments
realize that the same amount of medical resources
would have done much more good at an earlier time in your life.
But perhaps you put off seeking medical attention
until the problem had become serious (and very expensive to treat).

     If you wish to place financial limits on your terminal care,
this is the place in your Advance Directive to state your philosophy.
Such voluntary limits, coming from individual patients such as yourself,
might serve as a first approximation of the limits
that should eventually be imposed even on people
who do not initially agree to any limits.

     If you have private health insurance, you already have a built-in limit,
perhaps one million dollars for any one illness.
What will your family do if and when that limit is reached?
Some families then begin to spend their own assets on medical bills.
When all the liquid assets are gone,
then the family is poor enough to qualify for medicaid, which has no limit.

     How much do you want your family to pay for your terminal care?
If you do not want your family impoverished paying for your last year,
then you should explain in your Advance Directive
that you want no further care if all the insurance money is gone.
This choice would preserve the family assets
for those who will need them after you are dead.
If you are not sure about what should be done, you can at least suggest
that the point when the insurance money runs out
might be a good time for the family to assess what goals
they are trying to achieve thru medical expenditure.
Your proxies could ask the doctors what benefits might come
from spending more money on your medical care.

QUESTION 10:               FINANCIAL LIMITS                by JAMES PARK                  113


  The selection above is the first page of Question 10 from the book:
Your Last Year: Creating Your Own Advance Directive for Medical Care.
If you click this title, you will see the complete table of contents.
There is one more page exploring options
for placing financial limits on your terminal care.
If you would like to see one person's Answer to this Question,
go to James Park's Advance Directive for Medical Care.
Scroll down to Answer 10.


Go to the index page for Your Last Year:
Creating Your Own Advance Directive for Medical Care.


Go to the Portal for Advance Directives.


Go to the Right-to-Die Portal.


Go to the Medical Ethics index page.


Go to the DEATH index page.


Go to the opening page for this website:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum.




The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.