Letter to the editor: Medicaid spends great deal on end-life ‘heroic’ measures

Re: “Letter to the editor: Obamacare advisory board sounds like a death panel” (April 19):

Mark Kilburn is right: Almost a third of Medicare’s budget is spent on the beneficiaries’ last year of life – most of it the last month.

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This is spent, in large part, on “heroic” intervention. This does nothing to improve the quality of life. I would venture that most don’t know it’s being done so that their caregivers can say, “We tried everything.”

I am 82 years old and in excellent health. I have a living will that says “no heroic intervention of any kind.” Keep me as comfortable as possible and let me die.

R.E. Marsh

Sanford

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