healthcare power of attorney

While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on April 27, 2011. By Liz Borkowski Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following proposal: If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age, then we'd immediately make a dent in some way on…

Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following proposal: If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age, then we'd immediately make a dent in some way on future healthcare costs. He goes on to note that this would be entirely voluntary, and suggests "an easily reached website that makes such a legal…