First few Article Sentences
When President Obama signed the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010, the word "death" appeared in the 903 pages of Public Law 111-148 a mere fifteen times. However, the concept of death plays an integral role in defining the institution of health care in the United States, often in the form of increased funding from or on behalf of a health care provider to forestall its inevitable arrival. At the same time, health care has an abundance of codified rules and regulations, and hospitals and providers must adhere to a stringent standard of care governing the provider-patient encounter. Within this equation, death is a total wild card, and the inestimable stress it places upon our health care system remains completely unpredictable.