Health Affairs

Health Affairs, 24, no. 3 (2005): 817-821 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.24.3.817 © 2005 by Project HOPE	New Online   Getting Health Reform Done   After the State of the Union   Incremental Reform   E-Health in Developing World   Most-Read Articles in 2009

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Narrative Matters

Luck Of The Dying

Veneta Masson

My mother’s death cost $4,601.91. Medicare paid almost all of it; her Medigap policy covered the rest. Mom incurred no out-of-pocket expenses except for the Taco Bell crunchy beef tacos she kept asking for in her last weeks but barely touched.

As a nurse who has seen her share of death—the good, the sad, the horrific—I can attest to my mother’s luck in hers. She died of cancer at age eighty-four. It wasn’t the catastrophic kind that took my sister from her school-age children after three years of nonstop but ultimately futile treatment. My mother’s cancer was the late-blooming variety . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Mom’s Way

 

Mom Meets Dr. O.

 

Mom Begins The Work Of Dying

 

Dying Healthy

 

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