Deciding When a Life is No Longer Worth Living

by Joanne Faryon inewsource.org

A report about the “vent farms” in Coronado, and the helpless people in it.

In California, 4,000 men, women and children are being kept alive with machines in special wards in California’s nursing homes. “The default in the system is to keep people alive at all cost — it won’t let you die without your written permission.”

“The number of people kept alive by artificial means has nearly doubled in the past decade, with advances in medicine now able to save people who years ago would have died. Doctors, sometimes afraid of lawsuits or pressured by families, are providing heroic treatment to people who have no chance of getting better. These doctors aren’t always paid to have, nor are they always willing to have, the difficult end-of-life discussions that a few years ago took on the politically charged name of death panels.”

“Health care administrators and doctors say if the government weren’t paying the bill, so many people wouldn’t be living this way for so long — in some cases, for more than a decade.”

“Subacute made so much money it subsidized the hospital’s emergency room and surgical unit.”

Other articles:
“vent farms,” also known as subacute units..
“Guilt drove him to keep his brain-injured wife alive. What would she have wanted?”
“They need a ventilator to stay alive. Getting one can be a nightmare.”  From KFF Health News 11/29/25
“In California, some people on ventilators live in “congregate living health facilities,” which are residential houses that provide 24-hour skilled nursing for the terminally ill, people who are catastrophically or severely disabled, or people who are mentally alert but physically disabled.
Patients often must pay privately because Medicaid managed care programs don’t include these facilities as a benefit, said Mariam Voskanyan, who is president of the state association representing congregate living facilities and owns one in Los Angeles. California’s Medi-Cal program is authorized to pay these kinds of facilities through its Home and Community-Based Alternatives waiver, but the program is at capacity and there is a waitlist of more than 5,000 people.””