It was me and my sister in a room watching our brother hooked up to an oxygen machine and laboring to breathe. The machine buzzed. I went into the hallway and asked for the nurse. She came and said this happens all the time; it’s an old machine that had been refurbished.
A short while later, I noticed that I wasn’t hearing my brother breathe anymore. The machine buzzed again. The nurse came in. I said, “I think it’s right this time.” She checked his pulse and agreed. I asked, “What do we do?” She said, “You can wait in here or wait in the hallway.”
There would be no crash cart, no team from the Emergency Room coming in to save him. He was gone.
The overactive buzzer notwithstanding, there is nothing the facility could have done to save my brother. He died with dignity in a place set up to help comfort patients in their final days: a hospice facility paid for by the Medicare hospice benefit.
Future Americans may find quality hospice care much harder to come by. Between facilities such as the one that cared for my brother, doctors and nurses who specialize in holistic care to ease suffering to those who provide home care and other products, such as oxygen, it has become a sizable industry — it is expected to employ nearly 11 million people by 2022.
The problem is that demand is growing much faster. Between 1990 and 2013, the number of people taking advantage of the Medicare hospice benefit climbed from 210,000 to 1.5 million — about 700% over 23 years. That number is expected to grow another 20% over the next 20 years.
But the workforce of the hospice industry is expected to grow just 1% over that time, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. By 2030, there is expected to be just one palliative care physician for every 26,000 seriously ill patients.
On top of that, hospice is far more than doctors. For those diagnosed with six months or less to live, it provides emotional, social and spiritual services to support patients, and bereavement counseling and social services for their families. It provides oxygen and breathing machines for those who, such as my brother, need help to breathe in their final days.
Hospice doesn’t just mean giving up medically either. Many patients are seeking cures as well as comfort.
We have decided as a society, we will not let Americans die for want of health care. We also have decided, through the Medicare hospice benefit, that taxpayers will provide for a dignified end that respects family wishes, provides necessary care and services, and ensures facilities operate properly.
If this investment is to be protected, we now must go a step further and ensure these upcoming critical shortages of hospice care workers are addressed.
The Palliative Care And Hospice Education and Training Act, now before Congress, would do just that. It would provide funding for palliative care training in medical schools, disseminate best practices, and establish traineeships to help close the gap between demand for these services and supply of professionals to provide them.
Even better from the standpoint of respecting life from conception to natural death, the legislation would prohibit hospice professionals from causing or assisting in a patient’s death. The government should not be paying for people to commit suicide.
The legislation has more than 290 cosponsors in the House, which means Democrats are standing with Republicans behind legislation that give Americans the palliative care and other benefits they need in an orderly fashion that controls costs and delivers meaningful benefits.
If you’re a conservative, then respect for human life is a bedrock, non-negotiable principle. If you respect human life, that means not only protecting the unborn but all the vulnerable, including those near the end of their lives. It’s worth it to ensure they have the dignity in death we all acknowledge they deserve.
Brian McNicoll, a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., is a former senior writer for the Heritage Foundation and former director of communications for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
