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The main reason to go DNR is for quality of life concerns. Once an elderly person has already been impaired by a stroke or some other chronic condition, adding more "medicalized" life-extension on top of that is cruel.

24-7 skilled nursing care is a miserable way to exist, regardless of who pays the US ~ $10K/month bill.

RadioLab did an interesting podcast on DNR orders:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/262588-bitter-end/

I think people don't go the DNR route because their understanding of outcomes (from something like CPR) comes from television. Reality is much worse.

Depending on age, its always possible to just skip and start over? Preferable to being dead.