Many boomers avoid living wills, say they’re young

JENNIFER C. KERR

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Many baby boomers don’t have end-of-life legal doc­u­ments such as a liv­ing will — and some say it’s because they feel healthy and young in their middle-age years and don’t need to dwell on death.

An Asso­ci­ated Press-LifeGoesStrong.com poll found that 64 per­cent of boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — say they don’t have a health care proxy or liv­ing will. Those doc­u­ments would guide med­ical deci­sions should a patient be unable to com­mu­ni­cate with doctors.

“I’m very healthy for my age,” said Mary McGee, 53, of Arch­bald, Pa. “So, death and dying isn’t on my mind a lot.”

McGee, a com­puter pro­gram­mer, exer­cises five to seven days a week, every­thing from aer­o­bics to kick­box­ing, and her par­ents are alive and healthy.

The same goes for 57-year-old Sandy Mor­gan in Rich­mond, Va., a retired teacher who is work­ing part time for an exec­u­tive search firm.

“I don’t think of myself in terms of my age group,” said Mor­gan, who runs three miles a day twice a week, prac­tices yoga twice a week and takes part in a rig­or­ous fit­ness boot camp twice a week. Her par­ents, in their early 80s, are healthy, too — so liv­ing wills aren’t on her radar.

“I just feel like it’s some­thing I’ll prob­a­bly think about in my late 60s or 70s,” she said.

A liv­ing will spells out a patient’s wishes for med­ical care if he or she is unable to com­mu­ni­cate with doctors.

The health care proxy, also known as a health care power of attor­ney, allows an indi­vid­ual to select a per­son he or she trusts to make deci­sions about med­ical care should the patient become incapacitated.

Kathy Brandt says liv­ing wills and health care prox­ies are a good idea for every­one whether they are healthy and young or older and not so healthy.

Brandt, a senior vice pres­i­dent at the National Hos­pice and Pal­lia­tive Care Orga­ni­za­tion, said the two doc­u­ments can spare fam­i­lies a painful fight and ensure that patients receive — or don’t receive — the med­ical treat­ment they wish should they end up in a sit­u­a­tion where they can’t speak for themselves.

The liv­ing will is not “all or noth­ing,” said Brandt. A per­son could say he or she wants every­thing, some­thing or noth­ing. For exam­ple, one per­son may want heroic mea­sures taken to pro­long life, while another may want to be resus­ci­tated but decide against being depen­dent on breath­ing machines long-term.

Brandt pointed to high-profile cases such as the Florida fam­ily fight over Terri Schi­avo as a smart rea­son to draft a liv­ing will and health care proxy.

At 26, Schi­avo col­lapsed at her St. Peters­burg home in 1990 with no end-of-life care instruc­tions in writ­ing. Her heart stopped and she suf­fered what doc­tors said was irre­versible brain dam­age that left her in a per­ma­nent veg­e­ta­tive state. Her hus­band said his wife would not have wanted to live in a veg­e­ta­tive state; her par­ents wanted her kept alive.

What ensued was a years-long legal bat­tle that involved dozens of judges in numer­ous juris­dic­tions, includ­ing the U.S. Supreme Court, and Con­gress. Schiavo’s feed­ing tube was ordered removed in 2005. About two weeks later, she died.

Each state has its own forms for prox­ies and liv­ing wills, said Brandt. And while it’s a legal doc­u­ment, she said, you don’t need an attor­ney to draft one. The forms need to be wit­nessed, but that’s it. She advises giv­ing copies to plenty of peo­ple — fam­ily, friends, col­leagues — so a person’s wishes are well-known.

For baby boomer William Walsh in Peters­burg, Va., draft­ing a liv­ing will hasn’t crossed his mind.

“I just haven’t really thought about it to tell you the truth,” said Walsh, 61. “You always think some­thing is going to hap­pen to the other guy, not you.”

Walsh said no one in his fam­ily has ever needed one, but also said he might give the idea more thought.

The AP-LifeGoesStrong.com poll was con­ducted June 3–12 by Knowl­edge Net­works of Palo Alto, Calif., and involved online inter­views with 1,416 adults, includ­ing 1,078 baby boomers. The mar­gin of sam­pling error for results from the boomers is plus or minus 3.3 per­cent­age points.

Knowl­edge Net­works used tra­di­tional tele­phone and mail sam­pling meth­ods to ran­domly recruit respon­dents. Peo­ple selected who had no Inter­net access were given it for free.

Posted by AP News on Nov 16 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.