If we want Medicare to work we are going to have to raise Medicare taxes and premiums.

[pnwmom]

5. The problem is we don't know when the end will be.

It is only in RETROSPECT that we know when the end of life actually was.

For example, they're no longer recommending routine colon cancer screenings for people over the age of 80. However I knew a woman who had surgery for colon cancer at age 86. A few months later, she was found to have a breast lump, but she refused further surgery. She did agree to take an anti-estrogen pill, however.

She had another 9 active years of life, attending her grandchildren's graduations and weddings. It was only in her last couple months, at age 95, when she really slowed down and went into hospice care for her terminal breast cancer.

Should she have been denied cancer treatment at age 86? Some people might think so, but no one who knew her during those nine years would have agreed.