Medicare and Advance Planning: The Importance of Context

In January 2016, a long-delayed Medicare change took effect. The Medicare program will now reimburse doctors for time they spend talking with patients about end-of-life care. This is the move that Sarah Palin and other Affordable Care Act critics said would authorize government "death panels" to decide whether older Americans should live or die. Today virtually no one buys into Palin's death panel rhetoric. But many people do think the Medicare change is a big deal. Representative Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon who sponsored the original ACA reimbursement proposal, lauded the Medicare provision as "a turning point in end-of-life care." Others are not so sure about that. After all, laws promoting advance care planning have existed for decades. The federal Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990 and the many court decisions and state laws supporting advance care planning have had relatively little impact. Similarly, legal recognition of physician orders for life-sustaining treatment as advance planning instruments have not produced the improvements that were predicted. And from a broad perspective, advance care planning is a small piece of the puzzle. The effort to improve end-of-life care must take into account the limitations of advance decision-making, as well as the overriding importance of the general standard of care for terminally ill patients.