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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSenior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren't ready.
Washington PostTo the public school librarian from Poquoson, Va., it feels like a betrayal of a social contract. Doug Roper, a longtime high school history teacher and wrestling coach, has a pension and Social Security. The Ropers own a home; they have savings. Yet the expense of Dougs residential Alzheimers care poses a grave threat to their middle-class nest egg. At nearly $72,000, a year in assisted living for Doug, 67, costs more than her $64,000 annual salary.
Its devastating, she said. You cant wrap your head around it.
A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely unprepared for the extraordinary costs of specialized care. These aging baby boomers 73 million strong, the oldest of whom turn 77 this year pose an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. economy, as individual families shoulder an increasingly ruinous financial burden with little help from stalemated policymakers in Washington.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)and your retirement years spending all of it.
rampartc
(5,407 posts)closer to weeks or months at the most.
hippywife
(22,767 posts)I worked almost 10 years in a senior facility, with independent, assisted living and short and long term nursing care. It can go on for much, much longer - especially in a case like this one. He's only 67 and has dementia, which erodes the mind much faster than the body.
ret5hd
(20,491 posts)hippywife
(22,767 posts)Wasn't clear on first read, sounded like they were saying if you're in long term care you won't last that long. Haven't been up all that long and still need
Thanks!
shrike3
(3,591 posts)I'm surprised it didn't kill him. He did finally put her in a locked facility. She outlived him.
hippywife
(22,767 posts)that caregiver stress is very real and often takes out the caregiver first. However, given the financial situations many of us contend with, that's what we're faced with, sadly.
shrike3
(3,591 posts)His beloved wife, they'd had a wonderful marriage, grew more unruly as the disease progressed. He kept saying, "the vows said in sickness or in health." They were extremely fortunate in that he'd done well in life and had the money to put her in a nice place. I think he lasted less than a year after placing her, though.
hippywife
(22,767 posts)sometimes, impossible. I watched it happen often at work, and then with my MiL. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.
no_hypocrisy
(46,097 posts)In many cases, when a person enters a nursing home, the "residents" are rendered to becoming nonentities. IOW, they will be medicated to where they lose their ability to be independent, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I've watched people enter nursing homes with full cognition; when I have returned to visit in 10 days, I have found them to be in wheelchairs, unable to acknowledge my presence.
In other cases, I have witnessed others who were prescribed a term in "rehab," only to be transferred to nursing homes, where their assets will be drained, and they will be unable to leave.
I don't know what the answer for this is, other than having insurance that allows for visiting nurses to assist families whose relatives have moved in with them.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Is what Medicare Advantage is doing to try and keep people in their homes. Life alerts, free transportation, OTC drugs, free gym membership. free groceries if you sign up, wellness cards and other things.
erronis
(15,241 posts)While my loved one is dying of Alzheimers it's very comforting to know that the MA provider will be sending "wellness cards", giving free transportation to the free gym, among other things.
That was sarcasm.
The reality is that a patient that starts costing too much for the for-profit insurance companies, that HHS/CMS has given permission to rob their clients, the corporate owners will cut off the benefits.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)I have been there 3 times so I feel for you.
My post was about those who do not want to got to a Retirement or Nursing home. I am grateful for what MA is doing, I am one of those who wants to stay in my home as long s possible.
I use the Silver Sneakers to take pool exercises 3 times a week. The Teacher is a Physical Therapist who is really helping a class of about 20 stay healthy.
There was no sarcasm in my post but it was meant for others, not a patient with Alzheimers.
I also work hard to keep my mind active. I will not tell you my age but will say, I remember FDR and his Fireside chats clearly.
Celerity
(43,349 posts)overall state of the for-profit US healthcare system. It is the largest wealth transfer/extraction scheme on the planet. It sucks out wealth at staggering levels from the broad bottom 80 plus percent and funnels it up to the narrow top of the pyramidion. The US spends far more than most all other nations per capita (soon to be over 20,000 USD per annum, per capita by the very early 2030's if not sooner), all whilst delivering far from world class care for a staggering number of the populace at large.
The program rips off both the taxpayer and its own enrollees.
https://prospect.org/health/medicare-advantage-is-a-massive-scam/
If youve ever watched cable news, where the average viewer is in their late sixties, youve probably seen an advertisement for a Medicare Advantage plan. They usually star some washed-up celebrity whose career peaked right around when todays retirees were young adults (think Jimmy Walker or Joe Namath). And they always make a lot of big promises about how great Medicare Advantage coverage is. Theres just one problem: The sales pitch is an abject lie. Medicare Advantage is much worse than traditional Medicare for people on the program and costs a great deal more to boot. But unless the Biden administration changes course, private companies will soon devour the rest of the program.
Medicare Advantage plans are typically a combination of Medigap plans, which cover services not included in the government plan like vision and dental, plus a privatized version of traditional Medicare. About 28 million American seniors are now on Advantage plans, or about 40 percent of the whole program. As Barbara Caress explains in the Prospect, it was set up back in the late 1990s as a way for those wonderful private insurance companies we all know and love to work their free-market magic on one corner of the system America carved out as publicly run. Once we got business involved, surely the quality of coverage would improve and costs would go down, right?
The problem with this logic, as people realized even back in the glory days of neoliberalism, is that there are a lot of perverse financial incentives in health insurance, particularly when it comes to seniors. Half the reason the government set up Medicare in the first place was that as people reach the end of life, they tend to become sick and require more treatment than they can personally afford. In the pre-Medicare days, private companies did all they could to keep them off the insurance rolls.
Introducing the profit motive into Medicare has led to considerable hoop-jumping just to prevent such cravenness. For instance, if the government were to calculate the average per-person cost of Medicare and pay private companies that much per enrollee, companies would scramble to snap up all the younger, healthier seniors with relatively few problems, and cream off some easy profits. As Matt Bruenig explains, thats why the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services maintains a gigantic database of every single one of the roughly 64 million Medicare enrollees, and assigns them all a risk score based on their demographic and health characteristics. Advantage companies then get paid, in theory at least, according to how sick their risk pools are.
snip
erronis
(15,241 posts)plans. They may have served you very well - some do. But I also know many others that are being denied end-of-life care when it gets too expensive.
You have me beat by at least 15 years. I met Truman as a young child.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)And friends I have helped get the benefits available to keep people in their homes. I know many who are glad to have the help.
I do not need a football shill to tell me what I experience. I am truly frustrated we do not have Universal care, but we keep voting the idiots in.
hippywife
(22,767 posts)that only accept Medicaid or Medicare. Private pay facilities generally don't operate that way, and if you run into one that does, get the hell out.
Sucha NastyWoman
(2,748 posts)hippywife
(22,767 posts)I'm one of those senior citizens with no income except social security. I was just making a clarification of what was described in the post I replied to after working in the industry for almost a decade.
llmart
(15,537 posts)My two grown children have specific instructions as to my feelings about keeping me alive if there is no quality of life left.
Runningdawg
(4,516 posts)peggysue2
(10,828 posts)For myself and my husband. And we have a Living Will where the rejection of extraordinary measures at the end is clear.
My MIL had the same legally-drawn document, so when physicians said the only thing they could do was put her on a vent? The answer was: No. She was made comfortable, given palliative care and died peacefully.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,336 posts)-- before it ever gets to "no quality of life."
We're both donating our corpses to medical school. Additionally, if I'm ever told I have cancer and need chemo or need open heart surgery, not happening, either. We don't have the money to cover those kinds of interventions, and I just don't want to go thru any of that.
shrike3
(3,591 posts)I had cancer when I was young and treatment was grueling. I think I would opt for palliative care the second time around.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)I do not want my surviving Son to make that decision.
JT45242
(2,272 posts)I have little sympathy for boomers who turned from student radicals opposing a war, because they might get sent to die in the jungles of Vietnam to become the most hard core rethuglicsn base.
They have voted against their own interests and gave us the tea party, MAGA, and literally hundreds of attempts to roll back the ACA because it helps minorities and racism is more important to them as a generation than their own economic self interest.
They voted for people who gutted the EPA and public schools and universities after they got theirs.
They had many chances to make healthcare better and not a for profit enterprise.
Look at the voting pattern of who put the repukes in charge of the house and you see the people affected by this...
Just getting angry at boomers who gave us Reagan, bush 1&2, TFG, etc.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)And they are still doing the same thing. Voting for Republicans who are taking us back to the 19teenth century.
viva la
(3,293 posts)According to Pew, more Boomers lean/are Dem.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/1-generations-party-identification-midterm-voting-preferences-views-of-trump/
Only the eldest ("silent"-- ha!) generation is heavily GOP, and they're dying off.
The GOP has to use the electoral college, voter suppression, and cheating to get minority rule, and it's just going to get more extreme.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 18, 2023, 12:51 PM - Edit history (1)
They helped put Biden in the WhiteHouse,standing in long lines, determined to vote.
They object to what has been allowed to happen to their country
viva la
(3,293 posts)If I must die, I'd like to leave knowing that compassion and thoughtfulness are ascending.
Medicare only pays for temporary nursing care. Medicaid is where more money is needed, but it is considered by many to be an icky sticky program for undeserving poor people so it's always on the chopping block, even by some on our side of the aisle.
erronis
(15,241 posts)cate94
(2,810 posts)Their parents and grandparents did. We didnt give you Bush either. Your post is full of generalities
That really amounts to ageism.
and i do not know many boomers my age who turned into wall st wolves or voted for reagan either. .
erronis
(15,241 posts)Real facts.
Not the Conway alternate facts. Or fux newz talking points.
Hekate
(90,677 posts)Please back up your assertions with actual facts and sources, JT45242.
Kid Berwyn
(14,903 posts)Child care bills.
Medical bills.
College tuition.
Iraq war 1 bills.
Afghanistan war bills.
Iraq war 2 bills.
Savings & Loan bailouts.
Bank bailouts.
So, yeah, add on the retirement bills of our parents.
They paid for all the above, too. And more.
snowybirdie
(5,227 posts)steps in for nursing home care. They take his pension and pay for the rest of care. She gets to keep her salary/pension a savings amount, car and home. Certain restrictions apply like they can't have given away large sums of money within five years. They should check it out.
TheBlackAdder
(28,192 posts).
This has been going on for more than a decade now.
.
viva la
(3,293 posts)Do they go willingly? What about their families?
TheBlackAdder
(28,192 posts).
The care facilities remind them of home so there is that comfort level.
I'm not sure if Japan does what China does when they run operations in Central and South America, which is staff the facilities with nationals instead of locals, but I would think there would have to be a contingent of Japanese nationals there.
Typically, I believe it is cultural to have the younger generation tend to their elders, if at all possible.
I think this is the video version of the JSTOR article.
https://millercenter.org/news-events/events/new-population-bomb-four-megatrends-will-change-world
.
erronis
(15,241 posts)And they only do this to those folks without family - how convenient.
Last we saw him, he was being wheeled onto the large boat that was "going to southerly places".
TheBlackAdder
(28,192 posts)grantcart
(53,061 posts)is in decline so the revenue base is going down while the number of people needing care is going up.
Musk was actually right on this.
TheBlackAdder
(28,192 posts)jaxexpat
(6,822 posts)This one, along with climate change and the sudden realization that our democracy isn't real*, may be the "big one", Martha.
*Real democracies don't use an "electoral college".
Greybnk48
(10,168 posts)just like in the bad old days (gilded age). FDR and LBJ pushed us in the right direction, but we're not there yet by a long shot.
Proper health care is still for the wealthy here, even if you have insurance. It depends "which" insurance you have, and often, if you have a privatized supplemental.
I believe Democrats will eventually win the healthcare war and privatization will go by the wayside as barbaric. But, not to worry. The wealthy will think of another why to abuse, exploit, and humiliate people they view as beneath them.
erronis
(15,241 posts)about capitalists/libertarians finding ways to steal more wealth and kill the others earlier.
Ilsa
(61,695 posts)her 8 hours a day, and the sitter could call me downstairs to help with toileting or diaper changes. Hospice took care of bathing her 3 times a week. It was cheaper, but we still had to have someone in the home all day.
cactusdave
(11 posts)So if I can't afford assisted living 10 years from now when I'm 80 without bankrupting the rest of my family, at least let me stand in line for my poison pills so I can go home and die with some dignity - miserable rotten bastards!
erronis
(15,241 posts)wryter2000
(46,042 posts)Reminds me of when RWers said we should make other plans if Social Security failed. What other plans?
shrike3
(3,591 posts)liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)My mother required nursing care the last three years of her life.
Dad was left with nothing. When we sold his home, it went to the nursing home.
Peacetrain
(22,875 posts)we were able to get her onto Medicaid and a good facility.. it sure does not happen for everyone!!
Farmer-Rick
(10,169 posts)My social security and pension should cover the cost of a visiting nurse of some kind. I am a retired disabled veteran and have access to lower cost, at-home care.
Nursing homes are a hotbed of diseases and abuse as we saw when the pandemic first hit. Patients in those facilities are at the mercy of whatever disease or capitalist profit cut-backs that are around at the time. They take away the patient's entire wealth and benefits and insure patients have no way out or independence.
I am aggressively addressing my health like quitting smoking, losing weight, exercising daily in order to ensure my mobility and health as I age. I am nearing my 70s and am currently on No medication, have had No major operations, and am fully mobile.
I have several relatives who were traveling and going to events up until the day before they died in their 90s. They were never in nursing homes, never lost their full mobility, lived at home and only needed assistance about once a week.
You don't have to go into a nursing home or assisted care facility as you age unless you have very serious medical issues. Avoiding most of those serious medical issues as we age should be everyone's goal.
The article kind of implies that all boomers are going to end up in some kind of facility before they die. But it doesn't have to be that way if you work hard at staying healthy.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)The ones I see happily exercising in the pool, taking classes and using the machines free of charge thanks to MA Silver Sneakers are doing what they want to do, staying healthy to do it.
housecat
(3,121 posts)We hired a lady and her many grandchildren to make their own schedule and take care of her 24/7 in her own home. The last few months were spent in her own bedroom in their house, which included what she didn't have living alone at her home -- laughter, singing, and children. It was a comedy of errors, and my mother enjoyed the commotion until a peaceful end at 95. It was expensive and worth every dollar.
Farmer-Rick
(10,169 posts)You did good by your mother.
housecat
(3,121 posts)scarletlib
(3,411 posts)shrike3
(3,591 posts)It's not plush, but it's clean, comfortable, affordable, and everything is included. It's considered assisted living. Were she to need skilled nursing care we'd have to start all over. It's also meant for people of modest means, so there's an income limit. Luckily, she qualified. I honestly don't know how people do it. A friend of ours tried to take care of his wife at home. She had Alzheimer's. It about killed him: he was a two-time cancer survivor, so his health wasn't the best. He finally put her in a memory care unity. Believe it cost $7,000 a month. She outlived him. By the time he died she'd forgotten who he was.
Farmer-Rick
(10,169 posts)Much like you described. She lived to be 112. They took great care of her despite her being confined to a wheelchair and having diabetes. She was a very devout Catholic.
Some places provide outstanding care but it's really hard to figure out which are which.
shrike3
(3,591 posts)But there are plenty of places, secular or religious, which look good on the outside and but are rotten on the inside. And you're right, it can be hard to figure out which is which.
deurbano
(2,895 posts)people. (They refer to it in the article.) There is a demographic crunch with 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 ever day, resulting in a shrinking labor force that is not large enough to fill the increasing need for elder care providers. It affects medical care providers, and allied medical care providers, and also home care providers, since most people prefer to stay in their own homes, if possible... to "age in place." One answer would be relaxed immigration laws for potential providers from other "younger" countries, but too many Americans (of a certain political persuasion) are willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces rather than support that logical strategy. Also... we need higher wages/benefits/status for home care workers and other care providers to attract them to this work and retain them. Biden's caregiving infrastructure would have been a great start to that... a game changer. Unfortunately, too many people, including young disabled people, are already doing without the support they need, or being forced into nursing homes. (Or family members, especially women family members, struggle to provide that support, themselves.)
peggysue2
(10,828 posts)His Alzheimer's--symptoms and decline--became unmanageable for my 80-year old mother. My sister and I were looking at a dangerous situation bc our father no longer recognized my mother, had threatened her numerous times and had a series of violent outbursts. It was only after his death while cleaning out his belongings we realized he had a gun in his closet with plenty of ammunition.
So overall, I believe we all made the right decision. But the expense in dollars and cents was huge. My parents had a decent nest egg but it doesn't take long for that to melt away when every single thing is an upcharge in these facilities.
It's hard!
Sympthsical
(9,073 posts)"This sounds suspiciously like agitating for that 'free stuff' we keep getting yelled at about."
Is it tasteful to go down the list?
"Should have planned . . ."
"Bootstraps . . . "
"No one promised you . . ."
"You made your choices . . ."
"It's not fair to those who did it the right way . . ."
Actually, once I started typing it all out, I realized it was a really, really long list. Figured stop at five.
How about a grand bargain? Deal with education costs and we'll agree to lend a hand on yet another can that somehow got kicked down the road. We're getting really good at it.
snot
(10,524 posts)(in this case, intergenerational finger-pointing), can we please consider whether it isn't basically the 1% of every generation that's exploited every possible means for ripping off everyone else?
Dyedinthewoolliberal
(15,574 posts)And what can be done about it? Nothing, I'm afraid.