Wasting Away Again in Medicare-ville: Elder Care and Retirement Communities

I have heard several times over the last year or so that the cost of medical care for the last year of life is enormously more expensive than for other equivalent time periods. Now one important factor here is that it if probably less likely that you will need or have the same medical activities going on in non-last year of life periods. After all, we do expect doctors, hospitals and care providers to actually do things to keep you alive. Plus, who really needs an emergency operation when you have not just been hit by the proverbial bus?

So ok, we are going to spend a lot of time and money on trying to keep people alive. And let’s face it, if its you that we are talking about providing that last year of life effort on, you are probably highly in favor of it. And in many cases, I would expect that there are a good percentage of people who wind up actually having many more years of life because the effort was made. Remember, even if you get hit by that bus if the doctors are successful in repairing the damage then you don’t die and the effort turns out not to be the end of and last year of your life.
Basically, there are going to be some thorny problems in finding ways to reduce costs in this area. Not that we should not try; but we are going to have to be very creative, very careful and very wise in making sure that we don’t “pull the plug” when that is not actually the smart thing to do.

The increasing cost problem associated with this area of health care is unfortunately still going to be driven up by many of the factors previously discussed and will add new factors of their own. For instance, we are in aggregate living longer, getting exposed to more and more exotic substances and we are getting fatter. So unless some other bad behavior(s) in our society help us out by killing off a significant portion of the elderly population, we are looking to more people needing more care, particularly in the last year of their life.

Certainly, nothing related to elderly care and retirement communities is going to shepherd in the ‘magic walker’ of Health Care cost control.

These centers are set up to concentrate the services into an environment which is more effective than would otherwise be possible; but they also set up profit motivated operations which are not really driven to lower costs. And to the extent that they actually prolong the life of the elderly, they are also therefore extending the costs of those same elderly. I am not saying that this is wrong, only that it’s a fact to be understood. If we help people live longer by spending more money on health care, we also increase the cost of health care.