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- [00:00]
Chuck Bryant
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu. Every single episode.
- [00:15]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop.
- [00:18]
Josh Clark
What?
- [00:19]
Ed Helms
Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna. Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app. App podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:35]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
Hear insightful, entertaining discussions on today's important health and wellness topics on the Health discovered podcast from WebMD. Through in depth conversations with experts, Health Discovered covers everything from tips for healthier living to the latest on therapy and mental health. My goal is to really destigmatize mental health treatment and looking at it from a whole health perspective, physical health and mental health can be intertwined. Listen to WebMD Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [01:17]
Josh Clark
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too. So this is an old fashioned rootin tootin episode of Stuff. You should know about something we need to talk about Chuck. Okay.
- [01:30]
Chuck Bryant
Okay.
- [01:32]
Josh Clark
You remember back in, like, the, like about, like the 2009, 1011 era when, like, death was all the rage? People were having, like, death cafes and, like, creating living wills, and it was just a big thing that everybody talked about.
- [01:48]
Chuck Bryant
When Was this?
- [01:49]
Josh Clark
Like 2009-20, maybe 11?
- [01:52]
Chuck Bryant
I don't remember that, but I'll take your word for it.
- [01:55]
Josh Clark
It was a real thing for sure. Unless I've just completely lost my marbles and I just made up a whole era of American culture. I don't think I did. But that has died itself like that. It's gone back to death has gone back to being a bit of a taboo topic, an uncomfortable topic, at least here in the United States.
- [02:17]
Chuck Bryant
I didn't know that either.
- [02:19]
Josh Clark
It's true. I guess I'm just speaking for myself anecdotally. Oh, okay.
- [02:24]
Chuck Bryant
That makes a lot more sense.
- [02:26]
Josh Clark
So, okay, well, let's just cut to the chase here. There's this concept of a good death. Yeah, right. And you can probably fill in a lot of the blanks of what that means and what it means to you at least. But there's actually, like, some components to it. That studies have found, like kind of bubble up to the top that most people can agree this makes a good death. There are things like getting to say goodbye to friends and family, having those people at your side, if you want. So a certain amount of control over the dying process is. Is something being pain free, not suffering.
- [03:02]
Chuck Bryant
Sure.
- [03:03]
Josh Clark
Being in an environment and having a chance to kind of come to terms with the fact you're about to expire. Those are some of the top things that people say. Like this to me is a good death. And not coincidentally, those are the kind of things that hospices, which we're about to talk about today, are intended to provide. That's the service they provide is to give you, the individual a good death. And it's not something that's relegated to the rich. It's not something that's relegated to the educated. It's for everybody. Everybody deserves to have a good death. And that's pretty much the motto of hospice. And in fact, I ran across one motto. It said, if you can't add more days to life, add more life to days.
- [03:51]
Chuck Bryant
That's great. It sounds a little too corporate slogany, but I like the sentiment.
- [03:55]
Josh Clark
Yeah, there's a mascot, Louis, the dead guy, who. Who's like always saying that slogan. And he did a partnership with Home Depot for some reason recently.
- [04:06]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, boy. Well, that explains the orange bed sheets and things.
- [04:09]
Josh Clark
Right?
- [04:11]
Chuck Bryant
All right, so that's probably the last semi joke we're going to make. You'll have to forgive us for that. We did a whole episode on dying and I don't even know if we made one joke in that one, so.
- [04:20]
Josh Clark
Sure we did.
- [04:22]
Chuck Bryant
You think?
- [04:22]
Josh Clark
Yes, I absolutely think.
- [04:24]
Chuck Bryant
All right, well, we'll pair that with this one. Cause we got a lot of great feedback on the dying episode and how that kind of helped people out. So maybe this will do the same. We should probably go back in time a bit and explain the history of hospice, because it is very recent. If you look at sort of the timeline of people in the world dying. Hospice has only been around since like the 60s or 70s in the form that we know it. Because previous to that, for all of time, basically, medicine was like, hey, we're here to cure people. And if it turns out that we cannot cure you and that the end is near, for a very, very long time, until the last, like, you know, like I said, since the 60s or 70s. Very shamefully, hospitals and even doctors would sort of like it was a reminder that they couldn't save you. So they didn't spend a Lot of time with you. And there are a lot of well known reports of people kind of like scurrying past rooms where people were in their final days in a hospital and stuff like that.
- [05:30]
Josh Clark
Yeah, they left the dying who were incurable now to basically die alone. They withdrew support. That was just what they did. And like you said, it was a reminder of the failing of medicine. And this was a time when modern medicine was not in any kind of mood to be reminded of failings because, I mean, the 20th century was pretty triumphant for it. I mean, I saw the infant mortality rate decline by 90% over the century. There's like sanitation, clean drinking water, polo vaccine, like science could do anything. And people who were incurable were just a reminder that there were limits to that whole thing.
- [06:06]
Chuck Bryant
That's right. And another thing that was going on. And this is also pretty shameful. Well, I guess not shameful, but they've since revisited how they look at pain management. But you had to really be in pain to get pain management, and then that had to wear off and you had to be really in pain again for them to administer more pain management. They were worried about opioid addiction and stuff like that. But these days it's definitely more like, hey, we're not worried about you getting addicted to opioids in the final possibly days of your life. We just want to make you feel okay.
- [06:46]
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's definitely the hospice philosophy is you don't have to wait until one painkiller wears off to get another dose. You can, you know, stay comfortable. That's the point is to make the person comfortable. That's called palliative care. We'll talk a little more about that. But it's essentially just taking care of symptoms to keep people comfortable.
- [07:06]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. Nuns were kind of on the scene early on providing, you know, emotional support. They couldn't dose out pain medication, of course, and stuff like that. But they, you know, it was a lot of times it was religious organizations that were stepping forward that were kind of doing the hospice type work that would come along in the 60s and 70s, thanks in part to a couple of big landmark books that came out.
- [07:29]
Josh Clark
Yeah, there was this whole thing in the 60s and 70s that was kind of this rebellious streak that went across like or against some of the just unquestioned institutions. And one of those was medicine and doctors and hospitals. But there was a psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kubler Ross who very famously came up with the five stages of grief. That was in her 1969 book on death and dying. And in addition to being famous for coming up with the five stages of grief. She also basically interviewed people in the Chicago hospital's ICU who were dying and just found that they were just being totally neglected. And so she definitely lobbied for dying and dying people in their families to be listened to and to be treated rather than just ignored.
- [08:16]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, we talked about her and that book in our dying episode. I don't think we talked about the Denial of death from 1973, but that was from an anthropologist named Ernest Becker.
- [08:27]
Josh Clark
And.
- [08:28]
Chuck Bryant
And he was writing this as he was dying himself. So he was in a position to really give a good, pretty moving first person account. And he talked about sort of a good death and accepting the inevitability and stuff like that. So these things were sort of happening in the cultural movement when a woman, a hero, I think, named Cicely Saunders came along eventually, the founder medical director of St. Christopher's Hospice in London. And she really changed the game and kind of birthed the whole sort of modern hospice movement.
- [09:02]
Josh Clark
Yeah, she had a bad back from a young age, and apparently it kept her from her desired career of nursing. So she instead became basically a social worker at the time they called a lady almoner or distributor of alms. Right. So it's pretty old timey, but it does kind of. It's a nod back to the original hospice, which were founded in the Crusades by the Roman Catholic Church. Ironically, Cicely Saunders was raised an atheist, but she had a conversion to Christianity, evangelical Christianity, even when she went on vacation with a Christian friend and her family. And one of the other big experiences that led her to found the hospice movement essentially was she had like, some friendships with some people that she helped essentially as they were dying, and really kind of was moved by these friendships and wanted to make sure that other people had that same experience. So she did something that I mean, just kind of, I think, really gets across the kind of person she was. And she went to medical school to make her voice a little more credible.
- [10:11]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, she started medical school at age 33, this is in the 1950s. And she finished medical school. She was able to work as a physician. She started writing articles and stuff about this, about people being deserted or feeling like they'd been deserted by their doctors the closer they got to death, like we were talking about, and said, hey, there's gotta be a better way to take care of people, not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as they near death. So she got that medical degree, got a research job at a hospital, started studying. She wanted to have a legitimate sort of background for this, so people didn't think she was just some wacky empath trying to do good, which should be enough. But she figured if she was armed with medical training and real data on pain management and stuff, that she would go a lot further. And she did.
- [11:08]
Josh Clark
Yeah, she went and studied pain management firsthand so she could come up with her own protocols. One of those protocols that was really groundbreaking and went against the norm was to give dying patients not just heavy doses of morphine to make sure that they weren't in pain, but also cocaine to keep them from just being kind of doped up for the rest of their lives. She would find out what liquor they preferred and would make sure that they had their liquor. And all of this sounds like just completely reckless and careless, but she had before and after pictures of these people, terminal cancer patients, who in the before pictures, before they had been treated with her new protocol of pain management and, I guess, mood management, too. If you think about it, they did not look very good. They looked like terminal cancer patients. And afterward, they were sitting up in bed, perked up. Some had taken up hobbies like knitting. And she would show these before and after pictures when she went around the world speaking on behalf of hospice as she was trying to found it. And, like, she would get converts at every talk she gave just from the before and after pictures alone.
- [12:19]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it was pretty remarkable. This all culminated in 1967, when she founded St. Christopher's Hospice, like I mentioned earlier in London. And kind of right off the bat, she said, all right, we have a new way to deal with pain management. We're gonna get rid of visiting hours and people, family can come and go when it's convenient for them. And we're gonna not talk about just physical pain. We're gonna talk about what I call total pain, or what she called that. Like we mentioned, emotional support, social support, spiritual suffering. That happens with people. And one of the people that she worked a lot with was a nurse in the US Named Florence Waldo, who ended up doing the same thing in the U.S. she said, I think we need this over here. She started up the very first hospice in Branford, Connecticut, in the United States. And that was six years later after the one in London in 1973.
- [13:13]
Josh Clark
Yeah, that first American hospice, they tried a few names out before they settled on the final one, Hospice R Us McDying. And then they just kind of went with the straight name.
- [13:25]
Chuck Bryant
Wow. All right.
- [13:27]
Josh Clark
So, yeah, so hospice, that spread pretty quickly, I think you said. St. Christopher's opened up in 1967 and the one in Brantford opened up in 1973. That's pretty good traction to create a brand new idea in both the UK and the US and start spreading it around the world. And one of the things I think you said about St. Christopher's was even though it was religious or at least spiritual, it was non denominational. And that is a huge point about hospice that is lost on a lot of people. I think a lot of people associate it with religious groups still. And like, if you're not, say, Christian, you wouldn't really want to go to a Christian hospice. That is not at all the way that hospices work. And in fact there's plenty of people who are atheists, they're humanists, and they just are like those empathic do gooders that you were speaking about earlier. And none of these philosophies clash because they all come together to essentially say one of the big parts of dying is some sort of spirituality or at least some sort of peace that we associate with spirituality. It doesn't matter how you get there, we're all just kind of coming together to make sure that everybody can experience that. It's a big misunderstanding of hospice sometimes.
- [14:47]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. In the US it's usually, or at least at first it was done at home. That was a difference from the early ones. In the UK they were inpatient facilities, but in the US it was sort of a budget issue at first because they couldn't get these facilities and pay for them. But I think they also realized that people wanted to die at home. And there was also this sort of long running institutional distrust that Americans had. And it was a lot of volunteer work at first, like almost entirely volunteer. Early on it was sometime, like we mentioned, people in the clergy still doing this kind of work after centuries of doing so, doctors that were moonlighting that wanted to help out. And a movement was, you know, clearly growing and it made government sit up and take notice when they realized that it was saving money on healthcare. Because not only was the movement growing and people were just feeling better about it, but it was keeping people out of the hospital sort of off and on, off and on, off and on. And so much so that the US government and the Reagan administration said, you know what, we should get this covered. And in 1982, the Hospice Medicare benefit went through, which allowed people all of a sudden to be able to pay from staff run by professionals that were also paid and get it covered through Medicare.
- [16:13]
Josh Clark
Yeah, which opened up the door for people who wanted to help people during the final days or weeks of their life, but there wasn't a career associated with it now. There was so you could pursue that kind of medicine. End of life medicine. That's pretty cool that that was a huge change. I suspect that the saving money had a lot to do with it though.
- [16:36]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that's usually the case.
- [16:38]
Josh Clark
And the reason why let's just spell it out explicitly. The reason why it saves money is because you're taking a patient off of a very expensive track, which is a lot of different medical procedures and treatments, and saying you're not going to go for the curative treatment route anymore. We're going to take you out of this crazy not so medical world and puts you in a much more peaceful, tranquil world where you can end your days as a happier person rather than feeling like a guinea pig being experimented on. And it's just much cheaper to do that too. As you can imagine.
- [17:14]
Chuck Bryant
It feels like a good breakpoint. Yay.
- [17:16]
Josh Clark
Yay.
- [17:17]
Chuck Bryant
All right, we'll come back and we'll talk about how the modern system works right after this.
- [17:28]
Josh Clark
You should know.
- [17:35]
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- [19:37]
Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell oatmeal, so long you strange.
- [19:53]
Soggy break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with cage free eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM P M. Too much Good stuff.
- [20:19]
Josh Clark
So here in the United States, Chuck, hospice is usually paid for by Medicare, which is federal insurance coverage for people who are retirees, typically, or maybe disabled, and then also sometimes Medicaid, which covers lower income Americans. And the upshot of all this is that if you are dying and choose to go on hospice care, you are not charged for this. And that is a wonderful thing that the federal government does. Apparently the UK is very much like that, but a lot of it is donation driven rather than paid for by the government, which does chip in. But the lion's share is paid for by donations in the uk. But there's eligibility requirements that basically say like if you don't check these boxes or if you stop checking these boxes at any point, you can't be in hospice anymore.
- [21:10]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And those boxes specifically you have to have two doctors certify that you have a and this is for Medicare, you know, to get it covered, not just to get into hospice.
- [21:20]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [21:21]
Chuck Bryant
You have to have a terminal illness. You have to have six months or less to live and you cannot be going after curative treatments. And we'll talk about some. I don't even know if there are exceptions, but some things that some people might think are curative treatments and aren't curative treatments. That doesn't mean like don't ask for anything at all.
- [21:42]
Josh Clark
You know, you can't have a band aid. Yeah.
- [21:44]
Chuck Bryant
You're on your own. So we'll get into those. But and this is going to be a sticking point that kind of comes up later in some of the failings of the current system. But Medicare pays hospice companies and agencies a daily rate instead of for specific services. They provide, like, basically all the other medical treatment you're ever gonna get. And there are four levels of that care, and they're gonna be different rates depending on the level that you're gonna get and also where you are.
- [22:18]
Josh Clark
Right. So if you're running a hospice, you would get a flat fee paid by the government for a patient who's in routine care, which is you're not in crisis, you're still dying, but you're doing okay. And that usually is just a visit. Maybe a couple of times a week. They're coming by to make sure that their meds are going down. Right. They maybe have, like, their nutrition going. They're just essentially just checking on you. That's routine home care. There's also continuous home care where if that patient slips into a crisis, like, maybe they start vomiting uncontrollably, they start suffering uncontrollable pain that their meds aren't doing anything for anymore. Changes in consciousness. All of a sudden. Now they have 24. 7 hospice access at home. Yeah.
- [23:07]
Chuck Bryant
There's also. There's a couple of more. There's inpatient respite care. That's when a patient goes into, like, a. You know, they have to leave home to go into a physical hospice center for up to five days. A lot of times this is to give their caregiver time off, because that's one of the. The brutal parts about end of life is. And I say burden on the family. Not like, what a hassle, but, you know, it is a burden on the family.
- [23:32]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [23:33]
Chuck Bryant
People have to. Besides the emotional devastation they're going through, a lot of times have to rearrange their jobs and, like, even leave jobs sometime to do this kind of thing full time. So it can be quite a heavy burden on a family.
- [23:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah, actually, Chuck, that. That's a. If you look up downsides of hospice, that's pretty much the number one issue with it, is that it. It transfers responsibility for caring for the dying patient from, say, like, a hospital to their family. And that's a. That's. It is. It's a very big deal.
- [24:06]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And then the last one is general inpatient care. And that is when you're addressing pain control or any kind of symptom management that you can't. That you have to, like, go in and take care of at a specific place. It's not the kind of thing you can do at Home generally. And then, you know, palliative care is a big part of it. That's what we kind of mentioned earlier, is just making people feel better toward the end. You know, I mentioned things that don't count as curative treatment. Like if you have heart, like active heart failure, they can try and reverse that. Or if you have some, like, nasty bedsore that gets an infection that's not going to boot you off. Covered hospice care to get that taken care of.
- [24:50]
Josh Clark
No. The key to being covered for hospice under Medicare is that you are not pursuing treatment to cure the thing that's got you terminally ill. Right. So like you said, if you have developed a heart condition, but that's not what's killing you, you have terminal cancer, they can, you know, treat your heart condition. And even if you do have terminal cancer, if you have nausea from cancer, pain from cancer, they're going to treat that because they're not trying to cure the cancer. You have to give up things like radiation or chemotherapy. Those are curative treatments. But there's the idea that they're just like, nope, sorry, we're just going to put you in bed and basically let you lay there. That's not at all what. What you have to give up in order to enter hospice.
- [25:35]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And, you know, the hospice workers are doing a lot of stuff for you that goes above and beyond just making you feel better or maybe sitting with you and brushing your hair. There's all that stuff that they're doing, bathing you, housekeeping, sometimes helping out with, gathering and administering the medications. But they're doing all kinds of stuff. They might be shopping for you, they might be babysitting for your family to give. Like we mentioned, the people in your family that are caring for you like to give them a break. They may help with fundraising if you have, like, you know, money you need raised for your treatment. They may bring in music and comedy performances to hospice centers. People that cut hair, like volunteers that'll come in and style somebody's hair. Even. I remember that was a big deal for Emily's grandmother near the end is, you know, that she wanted her hair done and to look like she looked. And that stuff goes a long way to just putting people at ease, you know.
- [26:40]
Josh Clark
Oh, for sure. Another one that volunteers can do is take care of the person's pet to make sure that if the person is opting for in home hospice, that their pet doesn't have to go live with somebody else because they can't care for it anymore. So you can go and feed somebody's pet, take them for a walk, change the litter box, and then something as simple as just sitting with somebody and watching TV with them is enough. And, like, this is just a volunteering opportunity. In the United States, in the uk, basically, anywhere there's hospice, they would very much like you to volunteer to just basically be there. And just being a human being who can drive a car over to somebody's house is essentially the qualifications. That's. That's basically all you need to do. And they'll tell you what to do from there. But no one would expect you to, like, you know, inject the person. As a matter of fact, you'd probably get in big trouble if you did inject the person with anything. You just need to be there. And in addition to just being there for the person, the patient, like you said, that gives the caregiver some time to just go take a shower, do something. Just stop being a caregiver for a couple of hours, too.
- [27:47]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And, you know, even though a lot of them are professionals, like most of them now, there's still quite a lot of volunteers that do this kind of thing. That Medicare law that I talked about, 1982, that stipulated that hospice facilities have at least 5% of the patient hours provided for by volunteers. So that's one of the reasons. And also just because there are people in the world, some people have maybe gone through this with a family member and then they want to give back. Some people are just wired this way as empaths to want to help people. And then sometimes it's people that are preparing for career in healthcare and, you know, getting in a hospice and kind of going through the worst of the worst situations is, I imagine, pretty good preparation on dealing with any kind of patient.
- [28:37]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And you would prepare for a career in that, because hospices, like you said, they are professionally staffed and not just with nurses, not just with hospice doctors, but social workers, bereavement counselors, some of those clergy, and just general aides who can come together and help with that thing that Cicely Saunders started, kind of seeing clearly the total pain where, you know, if you have psychological pain, it's going to make your physical pain exacerbated and vice versa. And the worse off you are, the more hesitant people might be to come visit you because they feel hopeless or they're just freaked out or something like that. So now you have social pain. So if you have all these people coming together to treat the person's total pain, you have a much calmer, happier, again, good death and Those are called, in the hospice industries, interdisciplinary groups. And they do. They form a team for each patient to figure out what to do for each of the patients, to help them basically find peace and comfort and calm.
- [29:40]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, and this is a, you know, it's a booming industry now in the United States, and we'll sort of get to the. The downsides of that in a little bit. But statistically, from 2,000 hospice centers in 2001 to about 5,700 today, 20, you know, 24, 25 years later, it's really grown a lot. Utilization grew by 32% between 2013 and 2022. There was a 25% increase in Medicare beneficiaries, obviously, is the boomer generation is aging, but that doesn't account for all of it, you know, 25 compared to 32%. About half of people now in the United States enroll in a hospice before their death. If you have cancer, you're far more likely to do so, as well as being female and more educated and also older, which at first seemed like, well, of course. But just so far as to say if you're someone very tragically in your younger life that is stricken with something like this, you're far less likely to enroll in hospice.
- [30:49]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And there's actually a lot of reasons why people don't enroll in hospice. A good majority of them just don't either aren't really aware of it or don't understand it. And there's stigmas about hospice, too. Like, there's a whole idea that if you go into hospice, you're giving up on fighting for your life. You're giving up on living. And that's just absolutely not true. Like, if you have a terminal illness and it's really no longer treatable, a good doctor will say, like, there's nothing more we can do for you. There's plenty of stuff we can do for you, but none of it is going to extend your life. It's going to make your last days pretty miserable. We recommend that you go into hospice and have, like, good last days. Hang out with your friends and family, like, be peaceful. That's actually as far as the American Society of Clinical Oncology is concerned, that's a sign that you've had good cancer care. That toward the end, in the last few weeks, your cancer team says, you've reached the incurable stage. There's nothing we can do for you anymore except, let's put you into hospice. The problem is there are plenty of doctors out there who do see that as quitting, do see that as giving up and are known to steer people into hospice too late to where essentially they just spend, like, the last couple or few days in hospice, and they don't have a chance to actually develop what, again, is referred to as a good death.
- [32:14]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And there's even evidence that going, like, trying to cure yourself and sort of ceasing that process and starting up with hospice can actually make people live longer. A lot of reasons. Maybe you're being monitored a little more closely. Maybe your symptoms are being managed a little better. And just everything that goes into the non physical, sick and dying part that we've been talking about, the emotional part and everything else, like, if all of that is eased, Studies show that you can make it a little bit longer.
- [32:49]
Josh Clark
Yeah. That actually happened to Yumi's dad. He was in hospice and given.
- [32:54]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, man.
- [32:54]
Josh Clark
I remember not very. Yeah, there was just a. Just a pretty raw time he was given. Not much time to live at all. I think, like, days. And he didn't pass. And yumi started to notice he was actually kind of. He was eating more, his mood was starting to improve. And she convinced the hospice doctor that he was not dying anymore. And one of the things that became really clear that being in hospice at home can do to improve your health Is that you're getting better nutrition, you're getting good sleep, you're surrounded by people who don't have to come see you in the hospital setting during visiting hours. And all of those things are terribly managed in the hospital. So at home, you can just get better and better. And yumi's dad eventually left hospice, Was discharged alive, and went on to live for another three years.
- [33:47]
Chuck Bryant
Man, I remember all that going down and Jerry and I, all of us being like, oh, man, this is like. This seems like it's it. And you were bringing reports. You were like, man, the darnedest thing.
- [34:00]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [34:01]
Chuck Bryant
And then I just. I think we all suspected it was just gonna happen again right after that. And it was. Yeah, it was a few years. It was just. What a story.
- [34:09]
Josh Clark
Yeah. I've never been more proud of anybody than I am of yumi. She was the only one who saw, like, she saw it. And she had to convince everybody else, including me, that, no, he's not dying, and she brought him back for sure. So. Yeah.
- [34:23]
Chuck Bryant
What a gift.
- [34:23]
Josh Clark
It really was a gift. Yeah. I'm very proud of her.
- [34:28]
Chuck Bryant
All right, shall we take another break?
- [34:30]
Josh Clark
I think we should, man.
- [34:31]
Chuck Bryant
All right, we'll be right back. And we're gonna finish up with hospice right after this.
- [34:48]
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- [36:49]
Ed Helms
And welcome back to SNAFU, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new SNAFU Every single episode.
- [36:59]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
32 lost nuclear weapons you're like, wait, stop.
- [37:03]
Chuck Bryant
What? Yeah, Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid.
- [37:06]
Ed Helms
70S basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good.
- [37:17]
Chuck Bryant
I'm like, oh wow.
- [37:18]
Ed Helms
Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.
- [37:22]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
What was that like for you to soft launch into the show.
- [37:26]
Ed Helms
Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today.
- [37:30]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
I forgot whose podcast we were doing.
- [37:33]
Ed Helms
Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich.
- [37:37]
Chuck Bryant
So let's, let's.
- [37:38]
Josh Clark
Let's see how it goes.
- [37:40]
Ed Helms
Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [38:03]
Chuck Bryant
One thing we should mention kind of briefly, we don't have to get too much into it, but hospice and.
- [38:11]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [38:11]
Chuck Bryant
To die and assisted dying, these are two things that don't go together, but they obviously kind of do go together in a lot of ways, because you've got a group of people that are. It's the same group of people mainly. It's even, I think, legally designated in places where you do have the right to die. You have to have doctors sign off that you're within six months and there is no cure. And it kind of is in lockstep with hospice, but it's not the same thing because it's just not. The World Health Organization very much defines palliative care as something that neither hastens nor postpones death. It is not the point of hospice to go in and find an empath who will help assist you along a little quicker. If you live in one of those states. I think it's an amazing gift to be able to do that. And there's a track for doing that. But it's not hosp.
- [39:10]
Josh Clark
No. And the reason why it riles up hospice people who are against that is because there are. One of the reasons that people do choose medically assisted dying is to end their suffering. And hospice people are like, no, we know how to end their suffering without them having to die.
- [39:27]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [39:28]
Josh Clark
And that's why it really gets under their skin. Although, that said, there are plenty of hospice people, probably humanists, who are like, it's. It's anybody's inalienable right to choose how or when they die.
- [39:40]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [39:41]
Josh Clark
So, yeah, it is kind of a tricky thing, but it isn't. I think it is generally unfairly associated with hospice and even palliative care. I don't think we said explicitly that is to treat and manage symptoms, pain, nausea, that kind of stuff. Symptoms that come along with terminal illnesses. And that is a part of hospice. But not all palliative care is hospice. You can get that same stuff as you're pursuing, like, curative treatments. Right. So it's not like they're gonna be like, you're Getting curative treatments for cancer. Sorry, we can't do anything about the nausea. Then it makes. It has a place in both of them. And it has nothing to do with assisting someone in dying. It has to do with helping them die comfortably when they die naturally.
- [40:21]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And you know, you're not gonna get. You'll get morphine and you'll get like the good stuff these days, morphine plus. But you're not gonna get the cocaine and the liquor.
- [40:32]
Josh Clark
No. I mean, unless you have a family member who knows somebody.
- [40:35]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I mean there's somebody's got a guy maybe.
- [40:38]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [40:38]
Chuck Bryant
Or if you just have like a, you know, pretty empathic, like really empathic, like on the down low. Hospice worker.
- [40:47]
Josh Clark
Right. And I mean, even if you do score for them, they might not even want it. Like I tried to give Yumi's dad a bunch of cocaine. He's like, no, I'm good with the pain stuff. I'm on now. Yeah.
- [40:59]
Chuck Bryant
And then what to do with it, you know, so look, we found another joke. Amazing. So right before the dark side.
- [41:09]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Because there is a dark side to this. And again, the one downside to hospices, it puts. It's just the burden on the caregivers. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But the kind of generally agreed upon dark side of hospice is that there's such a thing as for profit hospices. And contrary to our private equity theme, in our private equity episode, we should say that there are plenty of for profit hospices that are perfectly well run. The family members who have patients and family dying there are totally happy, give them great reviews. Being for profit as a hospice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Where they start to get lower marks than other kinds of hospices, specifically nonprofit hospices, is when they are part of a publicly owned corporation. Like a hospice went with the IPO at some point.
- [42:02]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, like a chain.
- [42:03]
Josh Clark
Exactly. Or surprisingly or not, private equity owns the hospice. And the reason why it's problematic is because the way that payment is structured has a built in incentive for for profit hospices to cut corners and cut costs.
- [42:21]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. There was a survey in 2024 that 25% of hospices in the US are owned by private equity firms now. So you can refer to that episode as to exactly what goes into that. But you know, I said earlier to put a pin in the payment structure, which is they don't get paid through Medicare, they don't get paid out per treatment given or for specific treatments given. It's just this flat Fee. And obviously if you have a chain, a hospice chain that is for profit and has gone through the IPO process and has shareholders to answer to, very sadly, many times you're going to get hospice centers that get that flat rate, but they're cutting staff and people are getting the bare minimum treatment required by law.
- [43:12]
Josh Clark
Right. And I saw there's a thing where supposedly federal regulations say that you have to visit an in home hospice patient no less than twice a month.
- [43:23]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, just twice a month.
- [43:25]
Josh Clark
Right. And then a lot of for profit hospices like just basically do that minimum. And if you, most people agree, if you are in some sort of crisis, you're getting more visits, but if you're not in a crisis, you're getting fewer visits because they need to balance that out to cut costs. Right. Or keep costs down. It turns out that's a myth. The federal government doesn't require two visits a month at minimum. The federal government doesn't have any requirements for how often or how little a hospice has to visit a patient at home.
- [43:58]
Chuck Bryant
They have no requirements or they're not enforcing anything.
- [44:00]
Josh Clark
They don't have any requirements. And that's another problem too. They don't enforce a lot of the rules that there are. And there's already a lot of rules that have loopholes. So this is a system that is just set up for abuse. Luckily, most of the people who run hospice companies, they're not in it to abuse the system, they're in it to help people. But there is a place for bad actors to milk the system, overcharge. Like apparently there's, it's extremely complex, but there are ways that you can charge more than the flat rate per day. And I guess a study From I think 2021 in the Journal of Geriatric Care, I think found that for profit hospices tend to charge Medicare 34% more than nonprofit hospices. There's just a lot of stuff you can do to game the system.
- [44:58]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And you know, to be clear, hospice in general gets good marks from people. Even for profit hospices generally get good marks from people, but they've drilled down and they found the ones that get the lowest ratings for care are the ones that are publicly traded corporations and owned and, or owned by private equity firms. So do your research. You know, if you're getting into this, because there's, there are all, like we said, There's 5,700 of them in the US and hopefully there is one near you that will take care of you a little bit better to remain on hospice. There's also, you know, all kinds of rules as far as what's called live discharge.
- [45:42]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [45:44]
Chuck Bryant
You have to demonstrate ongoing, steady decline at recertification intervals every 90 days for the first six months, then every 60 days after until death or discharge. And discharge is basically exactly what it sounds like. You're discharged like you're discharged at a hospital. It may be because you want to try curative care again, which is great. And you're right. It could be because of an emergency that you have to go to the hospital for, which will boot you off, which really stinks. But there are guidelines about discharge, and not all of them seem fair.
- [46:20]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And you can imagine if you're dying of a terminal illness, being moved from a hospice to a hospital to continue treatment, maybe home, where you have a bunch of emergency room visits ahead of you because your symptoms are going to flare up. It's not a comfortable thing to be discharged from one place to another. It's also a huge burden on the family, too, because again, the care is being transferred from medical professionals to the family. But also, the whole premise of it is just faulty because not all diseases follow the same trajectory in the decline of the person. And yet they're all held to the same standard, which is essentially the standard that cancer creates a decline in a patient, too. So essentially, just saying if you have a terminal illness that's certified by doctors, that doctors recertify, say, every 60 days, you don't have to face a live discharge. Like, you can stay in hospice until you die. Your death doesn't have to cooperate with federal guidelines. That would be a huge change and a really simple one to hospice rules. But apparently that's not happening right now.
- [47:30]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And even if, you know, you aren't moved home, let's say. Let's say you move to a different facility, because there definitely is a problem with not having enough beds at different places. And the family can get ideally into a routine at least, and they kind of figure it out. And then with Emily's grandmother, it seemed like once everyone got into the routine and everything had kind of been figured out, then all of a sudden some change would happen where Mary would have to go somewhere else. And then all of a sudden, it's new visiting hours, it's in a different place, and everyone. And that's just on the family, of course, just like you mentioned, the move for the patient is really burdensome. So there's still so much they can do, I think, to clean this whole system up, you know, for sure.
- [48:19]
Josh Clark
And even Chuck, if They're not inpatient, just at home. Hospice basically overlays the support structure for you, the hospice patient in your home, right? So you have like medical equipment, you have medications that are like delivered to you at times. If you need a walker, you got a walker. Just all of this support, like you've got bereavement counselors dropping by, you have a social worker you're doing telehealth visits with. Like all that just stops when you're discharged from hospice alive. They come and they take the medical equipment, they take your walker away, you stop getting your medications delivered to you. You might not even have those prescriptions any longer after that if they were prescribed by the hospice doctor. It's a, it's a really bad jam. And the other thing about it too that Medicare is often taken to task for is they don't really pay enough for in home hospice. Like that's the lowest pay rating I guess is in home non crisis hospice care. And that means that if you are trying to stay at home, you either have to have a bunch of family members who are willing to commit their lives to taking care of you in your final days, or you have to have a bunch of money to pay somebody to do that same thing. And if you don't and you want to die at home, you're SOL because you have nobody to take care of you at home. Because there's not enough pay to pay people in hospice to come by and not enough volunteers to take care of your needs on a regular basis.
- [49:56]
Chuck Bryant
You know, Grandma Mary, former foremost general in the stuff, you should know army had a T shirt that says, you can take my walker when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
- [50:06]
Josh Clark
That's all. I would love that. Dude. Oh my God, that would be such a great T shirt. We gotta get that one up.
- [50:12]
Chuck Bryant
Can you imagine taking a walker from somebody for that? That's your job. Like you're the person and you're like, yeah, go over to Grandma Mary's house and take her stuff.
- [50:22]
Josh Clark
I know it couldn't even be the person who also delivers it. Cause it's such a mean job that they're has to just be one specialist who doesn't like anybody who just goes around to houses and takes the medical equipment back.
- [50:33]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, send Ronnie.
- [50:36]
Josh Clark
You got anything else?
- [50:38]
Chuck Bryant
No, I have nothing else. Hopefully this serves some people and just look around and do your homework and see if you can find a place that works for you and your family.
- [50:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah, and another good piece of advice is to do that sooner than later. Like Share your wishes with your family. Maybe even go so far as to create a living will or some sort of medical document saying, like, I do want to go into hospice. I want to stop curative treatment at some point. And then, yeah, do, like, read reviews. Like, just find out who you would go to if it starts to seem like that might be a possibility coming down the pike.
- [51:13]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Oh, man. My God. Get a living will. I don't care how old you are. It's very easy thing to do. And it's that and a will are the two biggest gifts you can give your family as you grow old.
- [51:25]
Josh Clark
That's right. You want to impress your parents and you're seven. Start thinking about a living will. Start talking about a living will to your parents, and they will just be blown away.
- [51:34]
Chuck Bryant
Totally. That seems like something in, like a TV show about a precocious kid.
- [51:38]
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. Like Alex P. Keaton. He would do that.
- [51:42]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, exactly. Oh, you know, he had one.
- [51:44]
Josh Clark
So before we finish, I just also want to give a huge shout out to Yumi's Dad's hospice doctor, Dr. Pujari, who did not have any sort of ego and was totally willing to listen to Yumi and helped get her dad out of hospice too.
- [51:59]
Chuck Bryant
So I love it.
- [51:59]
Josh Clark
Shout out Dr. Pajari. And since I shouted out Dr. Pajari, as was foretold by the runes in 2008, I've just unlocked listener mail.
- [52:12]
Chuck Bryant
This is Gen Z. Gen Z Stare speaks back. I have three emails I'm gonna try and sort of hit the highlights of because we got what I felt like was three really sort of legitimate answers as to what the Gen Z Stare is all about. That now I understand. You know, it may not be my jam, but, like, it doesn't need to be my jam because I don't have to put my Gen X stuff onto Gen Z.
- [52:38]
Josh Clark
That's true.
- [52:39]
Chuck Bryant
Hey, guys. 22 years old, Gen Z. Very much in the Gen Z Stare era. I work in customer service, which is where I use it the most. But we were raised with, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. So hence staring. So I guess they took that very much literally. Yeah, it's not something just done to adults either. And this person points out that they do it for their friends. As far as the phone call, no one calls us. When they do, it's a spam call, which I was always told the double hello people. I didn't know that was a thing. When they answered the phone, it cues the robot. Did you know that.
- [53:13]
Josh Clark
Yes.
- [53:14]
Chuck Bryant
Okay, I didn't know that. So I just answer and sit in silence until the awkward is this Josie follows. And that is from Josie Boozer. This is another one. Hey guys, Gen Z person. I think the explanation you're probably looking for is a lot of Gen Z are using it, are used to being interrupted, not taken seriously, or have our responses to stories be given a weird look. The example of where someone finishes a story and the person just stand there can either be one, I don't have anything interesting to say about that story and I don't want to make something up. Two, I'm so used to having my opinions not taken seriously that I'm just not even going to bother responding. Many of us are socially awkward and have trouble creating small talk with people that aren't close to us. Another reason may be because most of our conversations are online and have been online as we aged. And many people will give an emoji reaction to a long story or just get a smile and that's cool in response. That is from Sam. Okay, so it's kind of tracking along the same lines, right? And then this is from Catherine, who's been listening for five years as a 23 year old. I've heard people blame the pandemic, but I don't think it fully explains the generational trend since we all lived through the same period. I think there are two main causes. First, my generation has spent much more time in front of a screen than any previous generations did. We've grown used to one sided content consumption. You would look crazy if you responded to a YouTube video the way you would a phone call or an in person conversation. So we're a little out of practice with responding to prompts instead of just watching something. This all makes total sense.
- [54:52]
Josh Clark
It totally does.
- [54:53]
Chuck Bryant
And then secondly, Gen Z seems to be more likely than previous generations to forego the fake politeness that used to be expected in conversations. I think this is partially because we're constantly inundated with advertisements. We become highly sensitive to fake niceness because someone is trying to manipulate our emotions at every turn and sell us something. My generation seems much more likely to prefer genuine reactions even if they're negative. Because when we're online, that's the only way to know something is not an ad. Whoo, man, this is something else, huh?
- [55:28]
Josh Clark
Yeah, those are deep from Josie, Sam and Catherine, right?
- [55:32]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And I think they all sort of track along the same lines and that explains a lot. So yeah, if a Gen Z person is just staring at you.
- [55:43]
Josh Clark
Maybe they.
- [55:43]
Chuck Bryant
Think you're a real jerk and just don't want to say anything.
- [55:46]
Josh Clark
Right. They assume you're manipulating them right then. Yeah.
- [55:49]
Chuck Bryant
Or the other reasons mentioned. I think they're all valid in their own generational way.
- [55:53]
Josh Clark
I feel like that really explains the discomfort that people like, say, from Gen X get when we're treated like that because we are used to fake niceness.
- [56:02]
Chuck Bryant
I know.
- [56:02]
Josh Clark
You know, and like we're willing to go along with that kind of thing just to keep from a situation being uncomfortable.
- [56:08]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Also though, quick tip the if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. I recently went through an experience with a tattoo artist getting my my a tattoo covered up with my dogs. And he. I appreciate it. He did a great job. But he. Let's just say we weren't the same kind of person. He had a lot of interesting theories on. On things. And here's a little tip to my Gen Z friends. You don't have to not say anything. Just keep nodding and go Interesting. Oh yeah, I did that over and over and over for hours.
- [56:48]
Josh Clark
It goes a long way.
- [56:49]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Interesting and sure.
- [56:52]
Josh Clark
Well, no.
- [56:52]
Chuck Bryant
I don't even know if I am lying. It was interesting.
- [56:56]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Okay.
- [56:57]
Chuck Bryant
Just not for me.
- [56:58]
Josh Clark
Right? Exactly. Maybe the tone was a lie. Maybe. So the guy did do an amazing job. You said he did it like freehand too, right?
- [57:08]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, yeah. I'll put pictures up at Chuck the Podcaster. He's a sort of amazing artistic dude.
- [57:16]
Josh Clark
Yep.
- [57:17]
Chuck Bryant
Just like looking at pictures of dogs and drawing them on my arm. It wasn't like stenciled out on my arm first.
- [57:23]
Josh Clark
It's nuts, man. Well, thanks a lot again to Josie, Sam and Catherine for explaining that to us. You guys did a knockout job and we appreciate it. And I'm not being fake nice right now. I'm being quite legitimate and serious and genuine. If you want to get in touch with us and tell us about your generation, we love hearing that kind of stuff. You can send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.
- [57:51]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [58:07]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new SNAFU Every single episode.
- [58:17]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop.
- [58:21]
Josh Clark
What?
- [58:21]
Ed Helms
Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [58:38]
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
Hear insightful, entertaining discussions on today's important health and wellness topics on the Health discovered podcast from WebMD. Through in depth conversations with experts, Health Discovered covers everything from tips for healthier living to the latest on therapy and mental health. My goal is to really destigmatize mental health treatment and looking at it from a whole health perspective, physical health and mental health can be intertwined. Listen to WebMD Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [59:09]
Chuck Bryant
This is an iHeart podcast.