I thought I understood health care. Then my Mom went into the ICU.

Charles Ornstein is a senior reporter for ProPublica and the board president of the Association of Health Care Journalists.

My father, my sister and I sat in the near-empty Chinese restaurant, picking at our plates, unable to avoid the question that we’d gathered to discuss: When was it time to let Mom die?

It had been a grueling day at the hospital, watching — praying — for any sign that my mother would emerge from her coma. Three days earlier she’d been admitted for nausea; she had a nasty cough and was having trouble keeping food down. But while a nurse tried to insert a nasogastric tube, her heart stopped. She required CPR for nine minutes. Even before I flew into town, a ventilator was breathing for her, and intravenous medication was keeping her blood pressure steady. Hour after hour, my father, my sister and I tried talking to her, playing her favorite songs, encouraging her to squeeze our hands or open her eyes.

More from Outlook

Obama, the data-driven president

Nancy Scola

Faith in information has a dark side.

Five myths about privacy

Daniel J. Solove

Why it matters, even if you have nothing to hide.

Losing Dad, so soon after Mom

Charles Ornstein

Did he die of a broken heart?

Doctors couldn’t tell us exactly what had gone wrong, but the prognosis was grim. They suggested that we consider removing her from the breathing machine. And so, that January evening, we drove to a nearby restaurant in suburban Detroit for an inevitable family meeting.

My father and sister looked to me for my thoughts. In our family, after all, I’m the go-to guy for all things medical. I’ve been a health-care reporter for 15 years: at the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Times and now ProPublica. And since I have a relatively good grasp on America’s complex health-care system, I was the one to help my parents sign up for their Medicare drug plans, research new diagnoses and question doctors about their recommended treatments.

In this situation, like so many before, I was expected to have some answers. Yet none of my years of reporting had prepared me for this moment, this decision. In fact, I began to question some of my assumptions about the health-care system.

I’ve long observed, and sometimes chronicled, the nasty policy battles surrounding end-of-life care. And like many health journalists, I rolled my eyes when I heard the phrase “death panels” used to describe a 2009 congressional proposal that would have allowed Medicare to cover counseling about living wills and advance directives. The frenzy, whipped up by conservative politicians and talk-show hosts, forced the authors of the Affordable Care Act to strip out that provision before the bill became law.

Politics aside, I’ve always thought that the high cost of end-of-life care is an issue worthy of discussion. About a quarter of Medicare payments are spent in the last year of life, according to recent estimates. And the degree of care provided to patients in that last year — how many doctors they see, the number of intensive-care hospitalizations — varies dramatically across states and even within states, according to the authoritative Dartmouth Atlas.

Studies show that this care is often futile. It doesn’t always prolong lives, and it doesn’t always reflect what patients want.

In an article I wrote for the Los Angeles Times in 2005, I quoted a doctor saying: “There’s always one more treatment, there’s always one more, ‘Why don’t we try that?’ . . . But we have to realize what the goals of that patient are, which is not to be in an intensive-care unit attached to tubes with no chance of really recovering.”