Diminishing Returns

2009.09.01   prev     next

A couple days ago, Richard Egan, billionaire co-founder of storage system giant EMC, ate a shotgun rather than wither away in agony with end-stage lung cancer. This reminded me of what I heard somebody say on TV during one of the recent health care debates: Something like 70% of health care costs are incurred in the last two years of life. I’m not sure that was the exact figure, but I remember it was crazy.

Think about it: My lifetime health care costs (already quite expensive before my last couple years) then triple just so I can stick around for a couple more years when my body is at its frailest and least attractive?! It would be a tough call even if I got to spend those last two years being vibrant, young, healthy, creative, and capable. As it is, it’s not a tough call at all.

I have to suspect that most people who spend this huge wad of dough for their last two years of medical care don’t even realize what they’re doing. They think that this is just an expensive, unexpected, temporary medical crisis that they’re going to get through, then live on for many, many years after, enjoying life to the fullest. They just refuse to believe in their own mortality.

For the record: Even assuming I have loads of cash to spend on medical care by then (which seems increasingly doubtful with each passing year), I am not going to hand buckets of money over to doctors and technicians at some hospital so they can see how many months they can keep a failing body going. Those doctors have better things to do.

And so do I.

More in this vein: Lessons of a $618,616 Death