Patients with advanced cancer who discuss end-of-life care with their physicians appear to have lower health care costs in the final week of life than those who do not, according to a report in the 9 March issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. A second report finds that black and Hispanic patients tend to have higher health care costs at the end of life than white patients, despite dying of similar causes. Two other articles in the same issue examine dying patients' feelings of abandonment by physicians and reasons that patients request physician aid in dying in Oregon...
