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Patient Stories | Kaiser Hospice News Articles | Documentation | Lawsuits | KaiserPapers Opinions | We want to be as fair as possible about the Kaiser Hospice program. There are some families that are quite happy to get rid of their loved ones and have someone else assume the responsibility for the medical care. There are also some patients that knowingly enter the program with the desire to get it over with, and they do, generally within a week. There are also patients and their families that get service exactly as they expect and they report a decent experience. Many patients are enrolled into the program because they are promised their medicine or medical supplies will then be paid for. It often does not work out that way. Many patients are not any where terminal. Some have dementias of some sort and that condition is now allowed by our government in the hospice program. Unfortuantely, many people report that the care provided by Kaiser is nothing similar to what Kaiser has promiseid and because no one really regulates that program unless formal complaints are made, they get away with it.
There are more patients and their families that want proper, clean and decent medical care, and do not want the now common medical excuse given by a person that has an interest in shortening a patients life that they have the power to predict when a person should die and will make it happen as predicted. Most hospice patients are the elderly and their medical care is paid for by the Federal Government. The Federal Government pays Kaiser three months in advance and rarely checks up to see if Kaiser is properly managing the hospice program unless a patient or their family files a formal complaint. See: The Government Printing Office on Title 42 and here. Statements have been made that it is in the interest of the Federal Government to not oversee these issues because for every senior killed or encouraged to die earlier by any means than what would normally be considered natural, the Federal government saves several thousand dollars per patient annually, in money that is not spent paying a medical provider. The Federal government pays out at a higher rate for shorter term coverage to providers for cutting off most actual medical care.