Dying costs more for Blacks/Hispanics - and no one knows why

Dying in America is an expensive process, with about one in four Medicare dollars going to care for people in their last year of life. But for African Americans and Hispanics, the cost of dying is far higher than it is for whites.

—-And despite years of searching for the reason, no one has quite figured out why.

—-A new study by a University of Michigan Medical School team tried to get to the bottom of this expensive mystery with the most detailed study to date. The team published their findings today in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Unlike other kinds of health cost disparities, they didn’t find that the difference could be explained by differences in patients’ income, education, medical conditions or other individual factors such as use of hospice. The differences also persisted after they took into account general health spending patterns in a dying person’s area.

The team also took into account specific factors related to the unique circumstances that are present at the end of life – the first time this has been done. These indicators of patients’ own preferences still didn’t explain the differences in cost.

As a result, the researchers conclude that something bigger, rooted in the healthcare system as a whole, must be going on. After all the other factors were figured in, the cost of that last six months of life was $7,100 more expensive to the Medicare system for blacks, and $6,100 more expensive for Hispanics, compared with whites.




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