The High Cost of Dying: The Effctiveness of Expenditure in the Year Following Diagnosis of a Terminal Illness

TL;DRAbstract

The need for cost containment mechanisms in publicly funded health care systems will become increasingly necessary in the presence of rapidly rising governmental medical expenditures. This thesis will explore one sector of medical expenditure: end of life care for terminally ill patients, with a focus on expenditure in the first year following diagnosis. Survival time since diagnosis and adjusted health care costs will be generated for a subset of three terminal illnesses: cancer, stroke and heart disease and the outcome, in terms of expected survival years is found. The main findings of this paper surround the use of expenditure in the year immediately following diagnosis as a reliable proxy for the patient being in the last two years of life. From this conclusion, this paper recommends three potential policy prescrip- tions for cost containment for end of life treatment. i) health care should be rationed on the basis of a terminal illness diagnosis, ii) health care should be rationed

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