End-of-life economics

Yet Americans spend a lot of money trying to stave off the inevitable.

One-quarter of the money for Medicare — the federal health insurance program for seniors — is spent caring for elders in their last year of life, according to the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice.

Amid increasing anxieties over the rising cost of health care, and the contentious debates in particular surrounding a potential Medicare overhaul, a new nationwide poll from Suffolk University’s Political Research Center is believed to be the first to directly link health care spending for seniors with end-of-life choices.

The researchers were surprised at what they found.

Thirty-five percent of the 1,070 likely voters queried last month said they would favor allowing “mentally able seniors’’ to end their own lives in an effort to “help save health care costs.’’

“The wording of the question directly links the economic piece to end-of-life, so I thought there would be various slices of no’s that outweighed the yeses,’’ said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

“For me, it was an amazing finding that over a third said that this should be an option for mentally able seniors,’’ said Paleologos, who has been polling people for more than 25 years.

Men were much more likely than women to say yes, as were people under 65, and those with higher incomes and education levels. Among those least likely to favor allowing seniors to end their lives in order to save health care costs were Republicans, and those who live in the South and Midwest.

The Suffolk survey, which mainly focused on political issues, included questions that directly linked spending and care. Those questions immediately preceded the one on end-of-life, perhaps underscoring the relationship between money and mortality in respondents’ minds.

One question, for instance, asked whether health care is being rationed right now, and responses were mixed, with 39 percent saying yes, 36 percent saying no. The rest were undecided.