Table 6. Estimated percents of annual Medicare costs for the aged attributable to care rendered in the last 12 months and last 24 months of life, by selected major causes of death: 1979.

Cause of death	Last year of life	Last 2 years
	Percent of Medicare expenses
All causes	28.8	39.6
Heart disease	9.2	13.0
Cancer	8.0	10.7
Cerebrovascular disease	2.5	3.5

NOTES: See the “Technical note” for techniques used to estimate costs in this table. Complete cause-of-death titles and codes from the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification, 1980, are given in Table 1.

SOURCE: The Continuous Medicare History Sample of the Medicare Statistical System maintained by the Health Care Financing Administration linked with the Mortality Statistics File maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics.