New law could help hospice patients continue aggressive medical treatments

Kaiser Health News staff writer Jordan Rau, in collaboration with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reports: "After an excruciating bout of chemotherapy, Linda Meisenhelder gave up fighting colon cancer and last fall entered end-of-life hospice care. She was willing to quit curative treatments — a requirement for Medicare to pay for hospice — but says no one else in her cancer support group seemed ready to take that step" (Rau, 5/10). Read entire story.  

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.