Many of you will remember the “death panel” controversy during the health care reform debates last year. For those who don’t, a proposal to create a better payment mechanism for discussions between physicians and patients about end-of-life choices was derided by opponents of reform as funding for “death panels” which would make sure that elderly people chose the option of “dying early” to save on health care costs. Now it appears that early palliative care not only helps you be more comfortable and more in control of your health during serious illness, it can help you live longer as well.

A recently completed study from the Massachusetts General Hospital, researchers studying end of life care in a group of lung cancer patients found that the group assigned to early palliative care had higher quality of life and less depression than patients who received “standard care” (without early palliative care). Alone, this wouldn’t be a surprise; the surprise came when they found that the patients who received early palliative care lived longer, as well.

The policy implications of this finding are profound and seem to run counter to common sense. People have the idea that they can either fight disease as aggressively as possible, to live as long as possible or opt for care whose very name – palliative – seems to say that you’ve given up, and you’re just going to paper over the disease. The research from MGH is telling us that this is a false choice. Early palliative care-care which pays attention to relieving the symptoms of the disease-as well as fighting the disease through the usual means, you can live longer and feel better.

Far from demanding that we “die early”, advocates for palliative care want us to live as long as possible, but to help us keep our dignity and our humanity while we fight, and to make us ready for whatever our next step may be. Death is still inevitable; it doesn’t have to be miserable as well. We have it in our power to ease the transition, as well as delay it, and there doesn’t have to be a choice between the two. Promoting better and earlier use of palliative care is good healthcare policy choice, as well as a good use of our healthcare dollar.