Pay or Pay: A Gift from Medicare

MY MOTHER died on February 22. She was 88. I think she would have welcomed death, but the intelligent, philosophical woman we knew was already gone; the last months of her life were a painful slide into physical helplessness and utter disorientation.

She wasn’t afraid of death. And yet, along the way she made choices that led in a straight line to the thing she had feared most—-not as bad as it might have been, but bad enough, robbing her of dignity and mind. A gift from Medicare.