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I wonder how Obamacare will handle it.

I’d imagine it will start with a review of existent elder law and go from there. Plus as has been stated there is a lot of precident for this.

Iirc back in the early 1960s, President Kennedy made a sweeping change in how indigent and disabled elders were cared for. Before this time, the old and disabled were essentially warehoused in filthy and disgusting establishments. The change Kennedy advanced (again iirc) was the establishment of a long list of standards used in the treatment of State and Federal paid health care institutions. These changes were the cause to establish so-called skilled nursing facility. Since that time the standards have continually evolved. Care today is mostly very good compared to what took place before 1960.

My partner is a RN and I asked her about how they cared for people who could not do so themselves. She worked in a number of different State managed facilities over the years. I can’t begin to encapsulate the minutia (nor do I know more than a tiny bit) but accordingly, the goal is to make these people as comfortable as reasonable. I predict this will be unchanged, except to accommodate advances in care giving – the role that gerontologists play treatments for this group of people continues to evolve.

With medical insurance the insurer provides at least 2 payment caps - 1 is a lifetime limit of what the insurer will pay and 2 is what they will pay per malady.

Of course with current law, once the insured runs out of insurance or if they don't have any, the care giving entity is entitled to go after payment from the beneficiary. Once that is exhausted, it falls to the State to provide care. I can’t see broad change in this kind of law as families will rightfully pursue the care giver to the Supreme Court if there is the slightest whiff of malfeasance or malpractice.

In recent years there has been a growth of tolerance for assisted suicide for some states, and this trend will only continue, and there is nothing wrong with it, as long as the person to die agrees.

It is more than possible that at some time someone will come along and present money saving as a platform to at least try and provide incentives to snuffing people who can’t care for themselves, against their will and current law, but I am positive that will not originate from our current president or anyone who wants to be seen as respecting human life.

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MY solution is totally utilitarian -- you want it, you pay for it. Else, die.

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Hope that's clear.

(As a note, the forum software will not let me encapsulate the comments above in one set of quotes.)

I'm curious - do you and your wife have a statement defining this on an advanced directive and living will? Or did you leave this decision for your children to decide? Do your children have this statement on their advance directive and living will? Because it could possibly fall to you to make that decision for them.

FWIW, the kind of comment you wrote is easy to type, but it is not so easy to let go of a loved one, let alone participate in their murder, er, assisted suicide. Of course that not to say a lot of people don’t do that.