Medicare rewards hospice with lump-sum payments per patient, regardless of how long the patient lives. This Medicare “means of payment” incentivizes hospices to use unethical methods to end life prematurely, rather than give true life-affirming care to the elderly during their last chapter on earth. Hospices plan of action involves the overt abuse of opioids, psychotics, and benzodiazepines to shut down respiration, as well as starvation & dehydration, to prematurely end life. How could any of this be considered “comfort care”! Changes in how Medicare pay hospices would help to deter them from “Playing God”, and encourage them to allow our elderly to pass on God’s timetable. Our elderly deserve the “Right to Life” until God chooses to bring them home. Dementia patients, in particular, require personal interaction in their care, as opposed to doping, starving, & dehydrating them into oblivion. The whole culture within our hospitals, nursing homes, and hospice facilities need a complete overhaul. I believe changing how hospices are paid by Medicare (i.e.-lump sump payments) would help correct these unethical practices.
Very very important. As a DNP in Oncology I have witnessed this on numerous occasions.
I appreciate your support. I have witnessed the hospice lie of comfort care, which essentially equates to drug overdosing, starving & dehydration to cause premature death. Medicare payment reform might force hospice to change these unscrupulous practices.
It’s hard to make an argument against prolonging life, but…
Medicare is already in financial trouble and the cost of health care takes more than the cost of defense in the federal budget.
By increasing payments for hospice care, this would reduce the amount of money available for health care to people who aren’t dying.
You can argue that Medicare payments are too low across the board, and that Medicare payments should increase. That’s fair, but that money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is through taxation.
Are you willing to pay more for health care, not just for the dying, but for everyone? That’s really the question you need to answer.
My proposal to change HOW hospices are paid is to deter their unethical practices, which end lives prematurely. The use of starvation, dehydration, and overt overdosing is tantamount to abuse and outright murder, in my humble opinion.
People in hospice care are at end stage of life. The purpose is to keep them comfortable as end of life approaches. There is no other medical care provided in hospice. Your notion that medical care should continue under hospice defeats the purpose of it. If a person wants to continue medical care, they should NOT be in hospice.
Here is truth. My father was not a candidate for future doctor visits or hospitalizations due to the nature of his advancing Alzheimer’s disease. His body was functional, although his mind was severely impaired. My mother was caretaking as best she could at home, but needed help. Hospice seemed like a hopeful answer at the time. We were given the impression they would provide helpful supplies, cover his current meds, help with home hygiene, & provide home health checks. Hospice also assured the family that they could also step in to care for my father for a 5-day respite visit so my mother could get a much needed break to recharge her batteries as his caretaker. They emphasized they were going to care for him during those 5 days just as my mother had been doing, requiring a list of all his medications & instructions on how they were being administered at home. My mother even provided all these meds upon his arrival for respite care. However, once my father entered their facility for this temporary 5-day respite visit, instead of maintaining his home regimen, they ditched all the current care & medications he was receiving & started overdosing him with high levels of drugs he wasn’t even in need of (i.e.-morphine, fentanyl, ativan, & haldol). In addition to this lack of concern for how these abrupt alterations in his medications would impact him, they doped him to the point that he was only conscious enough to eat 1 meal during that 5-day visit & given no water at all. In addition, they made no effort to tell my mother about any of these adjustments or changes in my father’s treatment or status. We trusted we were going to get help with my father’s care in the last chapter of his life, but we received a euthanasia protocol that killed him within a week’s time. They betrayed my parents with their deceptive, unethical practices. If medicare had paid this hospice in a manner that did not reward them for speeding up my father’s death, my father wouldn’t have died in such a cruel, tortuous manner. A change in how hospices receive payment by the medicare system would go a long way in deterring prematurely ending our vunerable elderly’s lives. Hospices are to be providing empathetic care with respect to the sanctity of life, not becoming Death’s Executioner.