While more than three-quarters of Americans have discussed how they want to be cared for in the event they are incapacitated and unable to make their own health care decisions, less than one-third (30 percent) have actually legally appointed someone to act on their behalf.
That is one of the findings in a recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive for the American Bar Association.
The poll also showed that older Americans, those living in the south and those with annual incomes of at least $50,000 are more likely than other people to have discussed how they want to be cared for if they are unable to make their own health care decisions.
The same poll showed that barely half of single, never-married adults have discussed their health care wishes. It also showed that the group least likely to discuss their wishes for care if they become incapacitated are men aged 18 to 34.
And yet, according to 2005 information from the Centers for Disease Control, young men aged 15 to 24 have three times as many deaths as do women in the same age group and in the 20 to 29 age group, men have twice as many deaths as similarly aged women, indicating that young men are a group in need of advance directives.
Advance directives refer to documents that outline a person's treatment preferences or that designate an individual as a surrogate who can make decisions in the event that the person is unable to act on her or his own behalf.
"Advance planning for healthcare decisions is something none of us can afford to ignore," said American Bar Association President William H. Neukom. "It's tempting to feel invulnerable when we are young, but statistics make a powerful case for advance planning.