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Comment by robocat | Hacker News Reader

> supplying less end of life care would dramatically reduce medical expenses

This is a myth.

  [Those] with a high chance of dying accounted for only 5 percent of total Medicare spending, and among them about half survived in any case

  total spending on end-of-life care is only 9 percent of the total cost of health care.

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9% of $4.3 trillion is $387 billion. That’s a pretty dramatic reduction.

Unfortunately that figure contains selection bias - it is measured for those who die, but the figure for those who survive is missing.

That reduction is simply not achievable unless you can accurately predict who is going to die, which turns out to be very difficult to do.

The most significant health costs are for chronic conditions, and their ongoing consequent costs.

Your point is as non-sensical as saying we could save millions of dollars by killing 10% of the population at random.

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