Thousands of readers reacted to the articles within the “Dying Broke” collection in regards to the monetary burden of long-term care within the United States. They provided their assessments for the federal government and market failures which have drained the lifetime financial savings of so many American households. And some provided doable options.
In greater than 4,200 feedback, readers shared their struggles in caring for spouses, older mother and father, and grandparents. They expressed anxieties about getting older themselves and needing assist to remain at residence or in establishments like nursing properties or assisted dwelling amenities.
Many advised modifications to U.S. coverage, like increasing the federal government’s funds for care and permitting extra immigrants to remain within the nation to assist meet the demand for staff. Some even mentioned they might somewhat finish their lives than develop into a monetary burden to their kids.
Many readers blamed the predominantly for-profit nature of American medication and the long-term care business for depleting the monetary sources of older folks, leaving the federal-state Medicaid applications to care for them as soon as they have been destitute.
“It is incorrect to say the money isn’t there to pay for elder care,” Jim Castrone, 72, a retired monetary controller in Placitas, New Mexico, commented. “It’s there, in the form of profits that accrue to the owners of these facilities.”
“It is a system of wealth transference from the middle class and the poor to the owners of for-profit medical care, including hospitals and the long-term care facilities outlined in this article, underwritten by the government,” he added.
Other readers pointed to insurance coverage insurance policies that, regardless of limitations, had helped them pay for companies. And some relayed their considerations that Americans weren’t saving sufficient and have been unprepared to care for themselves as they aged.
What Other Nations Provide
Other international locations’ therapy of their older residents was repeatedly talked about. Readers contrasted the care they noticed older folks receiving in international international locations with the therapy within the United States, which spends much less on long-term care as a portion of its gross home product than do most rich nations.
Marsha Moyer, 75, a retired instructing assistant in Memphis, Tennessee, mentioned she spent 12 years as a caregiver for her mother and father in San Diego County and an extra six for her husband. While they’d benefits many don’t, Moyer mentioned, “it was a long, lonely job, a sad job, an uphill climb.”
By distinction, her sister-in-law’s mom lived to 103 in a “fully funded, lovely elder care home” in Denmark throughout her final 5 years. “My sister-in-law didn’t have to choose between her own life, her career, and helping her healthy but very old mother,” Moyer mentioned. “She could have both. I had to choose.”
Birgit Rosenberg, 58, a software program developer in Southampton, Pennsylvania, mentioned her mom had end-stage dementia and had been in a nursing residence in Germany for greater than two years. “The cost for her absolutely excellent care in a cheerful, clean facility is her pittance of Social Security, about $180 a month,” she mentioned. “A friend recently had to put her mother into a nursing home here in the U.S. Twice, when visiting, she has found her mother on the floor in her room, where she had been for who knows how long.”
Brad and Carol Burns moved from Fort Worth, Texas, in 2019 to Chapala, Jalisco, in Mexico, dumping their $650-a-month long-term care coverage as a result of care is a lot extra reasonably priced south of the border. Brad, 63, a retired pharmaceutical researcher, mentioned his mom lived just some miles away in a reminiscence care facility that prices $2,050 a month, which she will afford along with her Social Security funds and an annuity. She is receiving “amazing” care, he mentioned.
“As a reminder, most people in Mexico cannot afford the care we find affordable and that makes me sad,” he mentioned. “But their care for us is amazing, all health care, here, actually. At her home, they address her as Mom or Barbarita, little Barbara.”
Insurance Policies Debated
Many, many readers mentioned they might relate to issues with long-term care insurance coverage insurance policies, and their hovering prices. Some who maintain such insurance policies mentioned they offered consolation for a doable worst-case situation whereas others castigated insurers for making it tough to entry advantages.
“They really make you work for the money, and you’d better have someone available who can call them and work on the endless and ever-changing paperwork,” mentioned Janet Blanding, 62, a technical author in Fancy Gap, Virginia.
Derek Sippel, 47, a registered nurse in Naples, Florida, cited the $11,000 month-to-month price of his mom’s nursing residence look after dementia as the explanation he purchased a coverage. He pays about $195 a month with a lifetime good thing about $350,000. “I may never need to use the benefit[s], but it makes me feel better knowing that I have it if I need it,” he mentioned in his remark. He mentioned he couldn’t make that type of cash by investing on his personal.
“It’s the risk you take with any kind of insurance,” he mentioned. “I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”
Pleas for More Immigrant Workers
One answer that readers proposed was to extend the variety of immigrants allowed into the nation to assist deal with the power scarcity of long-term care staff. Larry Cretan, 73, a retired financial institution government in Woodside, California, mentioned that over time, his mother and father had six caretakers who have been immigrants. “There is no magic bullet,” he mentioned, “but one obvious step — hello, people — we need more immigrants! Who do you think does most of this work?”
Victoria Raab, 67, a retired copy editor in New York, mentioned that many older Americans should use paid assist as a result of their grown kids dwell distant. Her mother and father and a few of their friends depend on immigrants from the Philippines and Eritrea, she mentioned, “working loosely within the margins of labor regulations.”
“These exemplary populations should be able to fill caretaker roles transparently in exchange for citizenship because they are an obvious and invaluable asset to a difficult profession that lacks American workers of their skill and positive cultural attitudes toward the elderly,” Raab mentioned.
Federal Fixes Sought
Other readers referred to as for the federal authorities to create a complete, nationwide long-term care system, as another international locations have. In the United States, federal and state applications that finance long-term care are primarily obtainable solely to the very poor. For middle-class households, sustained subsidies for residence care, for instance, are pretty nonexistent.
“I am a geriatric nurse practitioner in New York and have seen this story time and time again,” Sarah Romanelli, 31, mentioned. “My patients are shocked when we review the options and its costs. Medicaid can’t be the only option to pay for long-term care. Congress needs to act to establish a better system for middle-class Americans to finance long-term care.”
John Reeder, 76, a retired federal economist in Arlington, Virginia, referred to as for a federal single-payer system“from birth to senior care in which we all pay and profit-making [is] removed.”
Other readers, nonetheless, argued that individuals wanted to take extra accountability by getting ready for the expense of previous age.
Mark Dennen, 69, in West Harwich, Massachusetts, mentioned folks ought to save extra somewhat than count on taxpayers to bail them out. “For too many, the answer is, ‘How can we hide assets and make the government pay?’ That is just another way of saying, ‘How can I make somebody else pay my bills?’” he mentioned, including, “We don’t need the latest phone/car/clothes, but we will need long-term care. Choices.”
Questioning the Value of Life-Prolonging Procedures
Plenty of readers condemned the nation’s medical tradition for pushing costly surgical procedures and different procedures that do little to enhance the standard of individuals’s few remaining years.
Thomas Thuene, 60, a guide in Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood, described how a buddy’s mom who had coronary heart failure was repeatedly despatched from the elder care facility the place she lived to the hospital and again, through ambulance. “There was no arguing with the care facility,” he mentioned. “However, the moment all her money was gone, the facility gently nudged my friend to think of end-of-life care for his mother. It seems the financial ruin is baked into the system.”
Joan Chambers, 69, an architectural draftsperson in Southold, New York, mentioned that throughout a hospitalization on a cardiac unit she noticed many fellow sufferers “bedridden with empty eyes,” awaiting implants of stents and pacemakers.
“I realized then and there that we are not patients, we are commodities,” she mentioned. “Most of us will die from coronary heart failure. It will take braveness for a member of the family to refuse a ‘simple’ process that can maintain a cherished one’s coronary heart beating for a number of extra years, however we now have to cease this cruelty.
“We have to remember that even though we are grateful to our health care professionals, they are not our friends. They are our employees and we can say no.”
One doctor, James Sullivan, 64, in Cataumet, a neighborhood of Bourne, Massachusetts, mentioned he deliberate to refuse hospitalization and different extraordinary measures if he suffered from dementia. “We spend billions of dollars, and a lot of heartache, treating demented people for pneumonia, urinary tract infections, cancers, things that are going to kill them sooner or later, for no meaningful benefit,” Sullivan mentioned. “I would not want my son to spend his good years, and money, helping to maintain me alive if I don’t even know what’s going on,” he mentioned.
Considering ‘Assisted Dying’
Others went additional, declaring they might somewhat prepare for their very own deaths than undergo in enormously diminished capability. “My long-term care plan is simple,” mentioned Karen Clodfelter, 54, a library assistant in St. Louis. “When the money runs out, I will take myself out of the picture.” Clodfelter mentioned she helped look after her mom till her loss of life at 101. “I’ve seen extreme old age,” she mentioned, “and I’m not interested in going there.”
Some advised that medically assisted loss of life ought to be a extra extensively obtainable choice in a rustic that takes such poor care of its aged. Meridee Wendell, 76, of Sunnyvale, California, mentioned: “If we can’t manage to provide assisted living to our fellow Americans, could we at least offer assisted dying? At least some of us would see it as a desirable solution.”
(KFF Health News, previously often known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is likely one of the core working applications of KFF — the impartial supply for well being coverage analysis, polling and journalism.)
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”