>>Is it the relatives who keep them alive or is it the pandering "professionals" who take the relatives' money knowing full well what the outcome will be?

What should the professionals do? Clash with the grieving relatives or unilaterally push gran across death's door? Be reasonable. Just because somebody gets paid does not mean they're featherbedding. Especially in today's tertiary facilities where most are on salaries and don't earn a bean more or less because of what happens to gran.

>>It was miraculous - they always seemed to conclude that she needed the exact amount of a therapy that her insurance would pay for, and not an iota more or less.
Is that a coincidence.. hmm?

We've had this discussion before. Does insurance agree to pay for a level of care that is declared reasonable by their experts- or is it an inflated target for greedies to aim at? If you go for the second explanation: why?

>>I should add that the nurses and aides who cared for her were wonderful- but the MD's and administrators - if Dante were writing today, he'd have a particularly nasty circle in the Inferno for them.

Sorry you had this experience. Of course there are some mercenaries in medicine and it sounds as if you encountered a cabal of them.