https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2013/01/25/easy-choices-on-health-care-there-arent-any/feed/HotAir is the leading conservative blog for breaking news and commentary covering the Biden administration, politics, media, culture, and current elections.en-usTue, 09 Jun 2026 09:28:39 -0400<![CDATA[Few of these choices are &#8220;easy&#8221;, in the sense that there is some simple rule you can pass that we know will really improve Medicare&#8217;s financing. End-of-life counseling for Medicare is probably a fine idea, but even under entirely unrealistic assumptions, it doesn&#8217;t save the program. The best end-of-life care is not necessasrily the cheapest (chemotherapy, for example, may be used to shrink tumors in order to make patients comfortable, not just to save their lives). And while end-of-life-counseling can improve decision-making, it doesn&#8217;t necessarily ensure that patients (or their grief-stricken families) will cease demanding expensive, probably futile, interventions. We have no idea whether allowing Medicare to reimburse for end-of-life counseling would save even as much in health costs as it costs to employ all those new counselors. Especially since we don&#8217;t actually have a huge reserve army of qualified end-of-life counselors waiting in the wings for the government to call them to duty.]]>Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:20:05 -0500<![CDATA[Allahpundit]]>https://hotair.com/headlines/2013/01/25/easy-choices-on-health-care-there-arent-any-n99569