(2004-04-06) Healthcare Cost Of Dying

How much of HealthCare costs are driven by intensive costs near the end of life?

• In Miami Fl they spend more than the rest of the country. During their last six months of life, almost half - 49.3 percent -- of Miami seniors spend time in intensive care. That's the highest of anywhere in the nation - 60 percent higher than the national average -- and more than twice the rate in Minneapolis.

• In Great Britain, much of this appears to be the cost of dying - the greatest expenditure comes in the last months of life as treatment is given to what prove to be untreatable conditions, and the heaviest expenditure comes regardless of whether people die in their 60s or their 90s.

• Others say (PDF) it's not acute care: American research has shown nursing home costs make up 62 percent of spending in the last 18 months of life for people who were older than 85 when they died.