10/24/2013 – Hiring an End-of-Life Enforcer

The chilling dilemma of “the unbefriended elderly,” who don’t have family or close friends to make medical decisions on their behalf if they can’t speak for themselves, generated a bunch of ideas the last time we discussed it.

One reader, Elizabeth from Los Angeles, commented that as an only child who had no children, she wished she could hire someone to take on this daunting but crucial responsibility.

“I would much rather pay a professional, whom I get to know and who knows me, to make the decisions,” she wrote. “That way it is an objective decision-maker based on the priorities I have discussed with him/her before my incapacitation.”

Elizabeth, it turns out other people have been thinking the same way.

Read the full article at The New York Times.