Seems pretty clear that it was worth it. The actual bill was closer to $250,000 -- $618,000 was without any discounts.

We work and save and pay premiums for decades specifically so that we CAN have someone pay $250,000 to extend our lives by 17 months. That is the PURPOSE of a health insurance policy.

It's hard to see this one as an example of our (admittedly terrible) healthcare costs.

I'm sure we can find ways to view the US healthcare issue as "Hacker News," but please let me have some sanctuary.

I think a partial solution to this is to require some small portion of health care costs to be covered by the patient. Would she have spent 5% of $40,000 if he was probably going to die overnight? If if she could afford it she probably wouldn't have. What about the previous two times when there was more hope? Probably so.

Alternatively, she paid higher premiums under the assumption that some extreme end of life dollars would be nearly wasted by some policy members, but that's okay because that's what they chose to pay for so that they would never have to make a cost benefit analysis in their own care. I don't think she needs to wring her hands about it, that's what she bought.

Since the article is talking about examining the detailed costs of the long, drawn-out process of his slow decline, it is important to note that she says he was an overweight ex-smoker, which made him (she says) a prime candidate for kidney cancer.

The biggest cost in western-style health care is not end of life care, it is lifestyle-induced illness that leads to an explosion of totally preventable terminal diseases.

Even oncologist question their utility today when they can offer the average cancer patient only meager life extension, and those are often pain-filled years at that.

But it's a good business model: people will often spend their net worth to extend the life of themselves or their child a few months. But in the end they almost always die the same miserable death. So I expect even more "childrens' cancer centers" to open and rake in millions.

Some friends lived with me for a few months while their daughter was in the NICU because she was born extremely prematurely. I don't know the final tally, but at some point the calculated the total cost to be just north of $2,000,000. I don't think it is possible for me to rationally discuss if is worth it because I'm emotionally involved (they now have a beautiful, healthy little girl), but it's easy to see that it doesn't take many cases like hers to jack insurance premiums up pretty high.

As our medical skills are improving we can keep people alive that used to die. Unfortunately our medical skill isn't advanced enough to do it cheaply. Perhaps the luxuries of time and money will get us there one day.

The real problems start not when "end of life" becomes very expensive (which it has) but when technology advances to the point where it is possible to keep someone alive indefinitely but at geometrically increasing costs. We've set it up so that everyone will feel entitled to that one extra week, no matter what the cost.

ice cold alert.

what was gained by keeping him alive, in a bed, not creating value, for 400k? the family suffered with him while he died.

let him die, grieve, get on with your lives.

and save the rest of us the 400k.

I like the “That moron Bush” quote when he can't remember anything but the response to who the president is.