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But is it true? The numbers feel awfully skewed - common sense tells me can't be right. Then I did a Google search, found this:

"The Myth Regarding the High Cost of End-of-Life Care" from 2015

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638261/

they report that 13% is spent during the last year(!) of life.

Also, just like with retirement benefits, the real question, did beneficiary paid for it nor not? Frequently these numbers are tossed around as these were "free handouts" - but we do pay for these all the time - and of course since it is insurance there will be people that get out more of it than others.

That makes either neither unfair nor something that should be fixed. It is working as intended.




In the article you referenced it says" 1627 billion spent on health care in 2011, we estimate that approximately 13%, or $205 billion, was devoted to care of individuals in their last year of life."

It says 13% but the dollar figure still says over 200 billion, and that's 2011 figure.

It's difference between total health expenditure vs. medicare.


I am not sure what you are getting at.

Are you saying the research paper got their conclusion and with that title wrong?

In my opinion, for anyone that cares about the scientific accuracy content of the paper titled "The Myth Regarding the High Cost of End-of-Life Care" should be more credible than that "comment"/"blog post"/opinion piece "Life is a Ponzi Scheme".

This is what is so wrong with this original post - it a not a curated, reviewed article. Just a subjective and superficial opinion - but because it was published in an otherwise selective journal it gets more credibility.


My point is percentage is different because they used different demoniators. But dollar amount in numerator is the basically the same. The former author didn't just pull number out of thing air.




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