Atul Gawande: Being Mortal. What matters in the end

A wide-ranging discussion of end of life issues with Atul Gawande, author of “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”.  Gawande is a practicing surgeon, a staff writer for the New Yorker, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and a MacArthur  Fellow. He discusses how medical science views death as a failure and does not always examine how medical treatments affect people at the end; the astronomical cost of end of life care; innovations in assisted living and hospice to not only improve the quality of life, but also allow people to live longer; and how health care professionals are trying to become better at end of life care.