No Place Like Home?

I am sixty-one years old. I am a three time cancer survivor, breast cancer and malignant melanoma, plus one Inferior Cardiac Infarction, severe arthritis requiring surgeries, and various other diagnosed serious health issues. I am on Social Security Disability, and am on Medicare, and have a Medicaid Spenddown. I am having serious gastro intenstinal problems, with internal bleeding. Medicare states that an Endoscopy and Colonoscopy can only be done every five years. It has only been about three years since I have had a colonoscopy, and I just had an ordered Endoscopy a few weeks ago, and fear that due to Medicare requirements, I will get a huge bill for the Endoscopy, since it has not been five years. It is extremely important that I have these tests done, since I am a three time cancer survivor, and I feel that all insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid should not interfere in the patient's care, when it is required by a Physician. I feel that sometimes, also, the latest treatments for diseases, transplants, and replacement parts for Medicare/Medicaid patients is different, than for patients with the best private insurance, that they are not offered the newer medical treatments and devices.

My 95-y-o mother paid 16 years of long term care insurance premiums which grew to $4000/yr. This year the insurance has begun paying for her ass'ted living at $2400/30 day month, only $250/mo short of the cost. If she lives two years (as she most likely will and then some) the insurance will have been a good bet. She was fortuante to be able to afford the premium and to afford the difference now. I don't think a lot of 78-y-o people would have had the choice she did.

And I am not sure that the higher difference in cost of nursing home care will be as manageable.

At 60, I'm kinda betting on the world ending before I need long term care.

My mother entered a nursing home as of November 2007. It is the only safe place for her. Hospice is involved in her pain management which means there will be no heroics only management to keep her comfortable.
I personally have long term care insurance but there is more to the equation than that- I will need to be in a place whre family are near to intervene if necessary and to help manage my funds. This may mean I must move from FL - where I live because of the milder weather to Maine where I was born and most of my family live.

If I don't due this, I am at risk of having complete stangers manage my funds if I can't do so. This has the potential to put my funds at risk of depeltion for no good reason.

My mother died last year after living with Alzheimer's Disease for over 12 years. When her care became too much for my father to handle on his own, I move in with them and he and I shared the caregiving. Then he got terminally ill. I was able to care for him in his home for his final 10 months (with help from Hospice and Medicare) but I had to move my mother into Assisted Living.

My parents were fortunate. Thanks to the pension benefits won by their union and their own frugality, cost of care was not an issue for them. But quality of care was. Staffing levels at long term care facilities are insufficient to spend the time needed to help people with Alzheimer's eat. Forget giving them the amount of mental stimulation they need to retain function as long as possible. I hired private duty staff to handle my mother's care even though "care" was included in the fees she paid to the facility.

When wandering was no longer a problem, I considered bringing her back home to live, but her home was not physically set up to handle her new needs. Her wheelchair couldn't fit. The bathroom wasn't set up for a disabled person. (And I was too young to accept moving with her to a 55-plus community that might have been designed for universal access.

Based on that experience, I envisioned an "ideal" community, not just for seniors, but for all ages and all family structures in which someone has a disability or needs care. Condominium ownership - so no governmental restrictions and regulations to interfere with caregiving. Universal design - so home units can be adapted for specific needs without prohibitive cost. Community areas - so families who want to can share meal preparation, or child care, or provide office space for a medical professional.

I see that some seniors are beginning communities like that - but just for seniors. I think it is important to make it multi-generational.

I see myself working right on into old age though I hope to be able to pick and choose my clients by that time. One thing that I am certain of is that I want LESS government intervention in my health care and old age options. If we turn over the health care system to the federal government we shall all be in as ill health as we are overtaxed. In my view, it is a social obligation to instill in our children the necessary values and intelligence to make decisions that lead to sound fiscal decisions from youth on and sound choices regarding health from the time we can walk. The idea that tens of millions of people in this nation still smoke, drink, use drugs and eat garbage is appalling to me! Why is it the responsibility of other taxpayers to be forced to pay for the bad choices of the minority who abuse their bodies and make stupid choices? There are always unforeseen circumstances that require us to rally around our fellow man. However, when that fellow man spent all of his life smoking, drinking, using drugs or eating garbage, in my view, anything we do for him should be voluntary (through charity) rather than forced though government.

I'm 62yr old in 3 weeks,my Husband is 65yrs old..I had to take a Medical Retirement in 1998.now that George is Retired,we have more Medical bills than ever.We hope we'll be able to spend our older years in our Home.we're trying to stay and maintain it.
You tell us this is our GOLDEN YEAR's?? no the Goverment has made it our "RUSTY" years..close in color );( tho.
Baby Boomers are really struggling to make it.after I've worked 35yr & George 40 sum odd yrs.
We need help in this Country. The USA has allowed everybody to come in and suck up what we can't now get and we were BORN here.
Thank you
Mrs. Hatcher

We allready have choices when it comes to long-term care.

I choose to live in my RV. I belong to the ESCAPEES (an RV support group) which has a CARE facility in Livingston Texas where I will go to live when I can no longer drive.

Some people choose to make the best of whatever situation they are in and others choose to wine and complain and insist that the GOVERMENT come HELP whatever thier situation is.

We also have to understand that whatever is done that there will ALWAYS be someone that will suffer extreme hardships and it will OUR PERSONAL responceablity to do all we can to help them.

HAVE A GTRAT DAY
Don Dresser

I think your Slogan is GREAT.

Divided We Fail. Together We (NOT THE GOVERNMENT) Can Do Anything.

That's what our Country is all about.

Have a GREAT DAY

Don Dressr

The cost of healthcare would go down immensely if we American citizens did not have to pay for the "free" healthcare of illegal aliens and their Mexican children. The system has grown because of immigration and this administrations refusel to secure our borders and deport illegal aliens and their children. This is the main reason citizens are forced to pay high medical costs. We cannot continue to let the entire poor population of Mexico to pollute our country and rape us of valuable entitlements that belong to hard working citizens.

Cut the "BULL" and be honest with the american public - you are well financed by the medical and pharmacutical companies!

The paradox of long-term care: the person needing it is not the problem; one way or the other he or she will be taken care of. Rather, it is the impact providing care will have on his family. Put simply, failure to consider the consequences of needing long-term care risks your family’s physical and emotional wellbeing. It also jeopardizes your ability to fund a post-retirement lifestyle and keep commitments to those you love and the community because you will likely have to reallocate income to pay for care.

This need for a plan for long-term care is created by the historical confluence of three simple irrefutable truths.

• People are living longer.
• Living a long life creates the likelihood of needing care over a period of time.
• Rapid advances in treating these illnesses make it inevitable that people will live longer with them.

The good news is that these consequences can be avoided by creating a plan for long-term care. A proper plan will allow you to receive the majority of care, if needed, at home, while minimizing the impact providing it will have on your spouse, children or others you love. It will also protect your retirement portfolio so it can be used for the purpose always intended, paying for a post-retirement lifestyle and keeping promises to your family and community.

Plan early. Save. Invest. Insure

I plan to vote in as much socialism as I can.

Does the AARP understand what made America great? I don't think so. America became the greatest country in the world because of the personal freedoms we have had in the past... including the freedom to prepare for retirement in whatever way you (the individual) chooses. If a lot of retires didn't properly prepare, why do we need to dismantle the best health care delivery system in the world and replace it with a system where the government gives you whatever IT thinks you ought to have. (1) I don't know of any government agency that out performs private enterprise. Do you?(2) I don't know of a single government agency properly funded to do the mission for which it was created. Do you? Today, we have the freedom to go to any doctor of our choice and the AARP wants to take away that choice? Only the Democrates and the AARP look forward to full-blown Socialism. Tell me of any country in the world where citizens have a higher standard of living than the USA. There aren't any. I didn't understand the AARP when I bought my three year subscription. I won't make that mistake again! For the AARP to promote individuals give up personal freedoms and personal choices in America and become completely dependent upon government... should be punishable by very long prison sentences. Jim Vaughan, Venice, Florida

My mother, Aldine E. Bonner, was a 90 year-old widow living in north-east Oklahoma, in the modest home she and my dad built back in 1936. When he died in 1985, he had had the foresight and luck to have built up an estate worth several hundred thousand dollars, which we were certain would see mother through her own life-time. I and my sisters lived many hours away by airplane when the car she was driving was struck by a freight train at a crossing without warning lights. Luckily, she had excellent medical care and therapy, and survived it, although she was greatly curtailed in physical mobility. Eventually, she could not walk (after suffering a fall and broken hip), and was confined to bed. With all of us thousands of miles away, I went back to the family home and arranged for the hiring of domestic care-givers (24 hours a day) and regular home health care by a Medicare sponsored agency. Even so, during the last two years of her life, she spent over $200,000 in home health care, over and above amounts reimbursed by Medicare. That ability to be in her own home, able to accept visitors and family, was a god-send to her. It should not have to be the only choice to send an aging parent to a "rest home" or continuous care facility where they are warehoused because they do not have the assets to provide what mother was able to afford.

Its a funny thing but when are congress represetatives are running for office they promise us they will do the job for us. but when they get into office they join the good old boy network and forget what they ran on. How can we make them keep there promise.

What's the point of have power if you don't use it? The motto of the AARP is "The Power to make things Better". With 39 million paying members, the AARP COULD influence the outcome of every election in this country. Why should Unions, the NRA, and even foreign countries such as Israel, have more influence in Congress and the President than the AARP? It would appear that the AARP's solution to the health care crisis facing seniors is to sell supplemental cover. It would appear that the AARP has lost the plot and become more interested in generating income.

I want to know if Divided We Fail is going to help promote and sponsor HR676, the Single Payer Universal Health Care bill that is trying to go through the house. We need this desperately.
Thank you,
Dolores Warren

My husband and I are facing this now. HE has congestive heart failure and Parkinson. He has just come home after almost 4 months in hospital and nursing home after a Parkinson freezing episode. We are getting some care now at home but I could not get this home care from June to Sept when he was actually worse than he is now. Reason, Primary care physican for some reason would not recommend it because he did not have sore, need shots for his diabetes and I was capable of giving him his meds. HE lost control of his urinary tract so it was 24/7 with help from only me and I am badly diabetic and have only partial use of one of my arms due to a fall. I almost had a physical and nervous breakdown and still this dr would not help us.

I was never an advocate of Socialized Medicine until NOW after all this happened.

What I am most afraid of now is that with my husband probably as well as he can be, the Medicare help will stop and I will have to go thru what we did before to get help again. We have changed doctors !!!

The system as it exists depends more on who you are and who you know than need, I am afraid.

My mother, who lived in the same town in which she was born, built her house back in 1937. Although my father died at home back in 1985, she survived until 2002. By then all the kids had left home and established residences and families hundreds or thousands of miles away. When she had a catastrophic collision with a train and her car, at age 88, her strong will kept her alive and eventually even limited walking during physical therapy. We (the kids) thought that a local "rest home" in the family hometown was probably best for her. We all tried for about three weeks and mother was miserable. She wanted to home.

That meant a few modifications in the house, plus hiring domestic help, 24 hours a day, to care for mother. Even in a small farming community, that gets expensive, plus trying to replace help (I spent countless hours interviewing and setting up bookkeeping and tax records, as well as the processing of required paperwork).

Fortunately, my father had his estate well-organized when he died and had made provisions for mother to live comfortably under normal circumstances. Nonetheless, virtually all of that was erased and consumed during the time she was at home. The only costs which were covered were the medicines and the Health Care advisors and Home Health Nurses who looked in regularly. I am grateful for their help. For adequate home health care, we spent over $200,000 in the last 2 1/2 years of her life. I'm certain that was still less than if she were in a hospital or nursing home, and she was very glad to be at home.

i am glad to hear that someone else is concerned about long term care. as a nurse in the hospice industry, i see many MANY patients who want to stay home but have no option but nursing home placement. families and patients can not afford the cost of private home care. it is strange that the government is willing to pay for pts to be cared for in an unfamiliar setting by strangers - a nursing home, but won't support the family and patient to keep them at home,in familiar surroundings, with people who love and care about them. i struggle thinking about having the money to retire, let alone money to care for myself when i can not. but we all know, nurses never retire!!

I don't know what I am going to do and I don't want to be stuck in a nursing home. I have worked for years on the other end as a coordinator for elderly home services and saw many discrepancies and I just turned 68 a couple of days ago and have many sleepness nights wondering what I will do when/if the time comes.

I am caring full-time for my 86-year-old Mother, who is completely bedridden. I have tried to find financial compensation from Arizona State Medicaid to help in caregiver costs. According to their guidelines, you can only qualify for caregiver assist when you are eligible for their AHCCCS program.

This does not occur until you have reduced your assets to $2000 or less.

Can there be a LOUDER ADVOCACY GROUP to help family members to qualify for help WITHOUT reaching poverty status?

I had to leave a 10 year career job to take care of my Mom, have not worked in six months. Funds are running out.

When Mother had a hospitalization, a social worker advised me of the caregiver option. If I chose to use this, I would need to acquire an attorney to protect home assests, savings account, etc for a fee of $8-10,000.

Why should we have to purchase this legal intervention? If the program does exist, albeit riding on the coatails of a state Medicaid program, why can't family members be reimbursed separately? I do not see what difference it makes.

I am so tired of hearing how lucky I am to live in a state where there is a program, only to be repeatedly told we don't qualify, or I have to spend 1/2 of the retirement savings for an attorney just to protect this money - yet, since not working, have to use this same money to live on.

Where can I start, who could I contact to change the situation for people like me to be able to care for family without worrying of losing everything we have?

I am the caregiver for my mother who is bedridden, and on a feeding tube. She has numerous health problems and requires constant care. I had to quit my job in order to keep her at home. I have no regrets for making this decision because I know she is getting great care and is in the home with her family. However, it is costing my husband and I our retirement savings and our retirement years together. If I chose to put her in a nusing home, the state and federal government would have to pay for her care. That is mine and your taxes!! There should be programs to help me to help her without putting such a financial burden on families or society. The State of Vermont has a caregiving program which pays family members or friends to care for the elderly who want to remain at home. I think all states need to look at what Vermont is doing and save money as well as give our elderly the care they deserve!

My 87 year old mother will be coming home from a care facility after recovering from a broken hip. My father is 90 years of age and still pretty mobile, but unable to lift my mother and provide the overall physical care she needs. They have been told medicare will pay for her care if she stays in a nursing home, but medicare will not contribute to any care given in their home even though it is the same level of care she would have been provided in the nursing facility. This does not make sense as there would be considerable savings for medicare as there would not be room and board expenses as in the in-facility care. It would seem this issue should be addressed by our elected representatives we have sent to Washington D.C.

My mother is going on 92 years old. About 15 years ago she had the foresight to purchase a LTC policy but at the time Kansas, to my knowledge, policies did not include home care. She has a basic no inflation based policy that started out being a lifetime but each year the rates increased so significantly that we had to reduce the coverage to three years because of the cost increases. Because of Macular degeneration she was unable to stay home alone, then she developed early stage dementia 2 years ago. She is now in a NH because the insurance will not cover home care even though she would be much happier at home. And, I understand that KS policies now cover home care. That is one of the problems with older policies. She is not on welfare. It is a fixed amount and I don't know why, once the need for NH care is established, why LTC companies cannot be forced to pay the fixed amount regardless of where she is residing. It should make no difference to them if someone is caring for her at home or in a NH.

I also have a question. Does AARP conducts studies/analyses of Long Term Care companies and rate them for financial stability, coverage, etc. My brother's company is revising its policies and has tripled its rates and he is looking for another company. How does he go about finding a reputable company in Kansas and determining if it has good financial stability, etc?

If you could help out on that question we would appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

As an interior designer, I became concerned about the lack of suitable home designs that allow seniors to age in place. It is imperative that the nation recognizes the 'quiet crisis' we are facing. I recently expanded my education and become a Certified Aging in Place Specialist and I am in the process of completing a degree in Gerontology: Environmental Design. Every designer should include basic universal design features in every home or they are doing a large disservice to their clients. There is one constant thing about age and that is everyone gets older. We need to design homes that 'fit' people not just build houses that people are suppose to fit into.

It dawns on me that as a LARGE GROUP... like through any larger company... we should be able to get better coverage for long-term care. Also... have those HUGE BUCKS we pay for that care be payable to a beneficiary even if it is without interest ... the amount that is not used in our lifetime.

If you have any data on that I'd like to know.
The policies I've researched so far do not offer any payment to beneficiaries of unused coverage... at ALL.

What about personal responsibility? I already support one of my parents; now I am going to support yours, too?? Who is going to pay for this expansion of benefits? When is our government going to reduce their response to this sense of entitlement -from attitudes like this to their own damn self-serving pork barrel projects?

I am frightened by the thought of being in a nursing home. My mother is presently in a better one around here we had a time with keeping her there, but thank God she must have had a small stroke and she does not know were she is. The food should not be fed to animals, it is tasteless crap. I bring her food from restaurants when I can and she eats like a starved dog. I believe we need to make people more aware of the conditions they face and they may make better plans for the end.

May of the seniors here don't have many choices in health care and the opprtunity to stay at home of a nursing home. The ecconemy here has fallen to all time lows and families, both husband and wife, are forced to work and with little ones, they have no time or money to help care for their elderly parents. There are many "communities" for the elderly that offer "in house" nursing and house cleaning. However, these communities are every expensive and many of our elderly just can't offerd such a luxuary. I helped take care of my Dad for 16 years while working full time and raising a son. Later, I took care of my Mom for four years with an unexpected death. Because I needed to take a family leave of absense when Dad came to the end of his life, I lost my job two weeks after his funeral. Of course that isn't how they explained why I was let go but they called me every day about when I would be returning. That is what we face as working care takers face. It isn't easy as now I face medical problems that are not cureable and my husband is working his fingers to the bone trying to keep us going. We have been waiting 3 years to hear something on the disability I applied for. Finally had a hearing on March 14th but the judge has further questions so I don't know when I will know whether or not I have been accepted. My mom and dad were divorced and it is exceptionally difficult for those that have lost their spouse. Something has to be done, thats why I write to the Congressmen regarding these issues. If it wasn't for AARP fighting for their rights, sone of our elderly would be living in poverty. Thank you for all that you do and I will continue to help in anyway I can.
Sincerely,
Marsha Guess

I wish to stay in my home of 64yr. My husband has passed, but have sons farming with me,
I feel I can do as I am able, drive , eat what I want, sew, cook, computer bookwork,and be outside when I want too, there may be a day
not able to do a lot, but hope to get some part time help and meals, It is still our home, I am 87yr. and as yet active.

In my late 20's I suddenly found myself having to provide a high level of care for my grandmother (alzheimers/dimentia), my father (congestive heart failure, alcoholism, bi-polar), and my mother (diabetes, wheelchair). For a period of almost ten years I made all the difficult choices, endured all the financial hardships, and in the end had to place my grandmother and father in long term care.

She eventually died in care at 92, but because I had not taken the extra step of securing guardianship for my father he signed himself out of the assisted living center and cut off contact with the entire family. He was homeless for two years and I eventually got a call that he had been found at a bus stop with pnemonia and heart failure, and was in a hospital ICU. He died two days later before I could get there to see him.

I had to auction off the contents of their house and act as my my mother's POA through a bankruptcy and foreclosure, until my brother and I were able to find her a safe, secure apt down the street from his house where she lives now on social security and disability.

My main point is this: my parent's generation, the Baby Boomers, lived their life their way without any regard to their own futures, let alone the future of my generation, or my children's generation. Instead of caring for their own parents they created the abyss we now refer to a "long term care" so they could be relieved of their responsibility to their parents and "live their lives".

Now, as tens of millions of them move through the system, everyone is all shocked and indignent that the same system is deeply flawed, underfunded, and not in any way structured to serve the elderly without means or ample insurance. Add to that the most current ratio of workers to recipients for social security has dwindled from 149:1 in 1941 to 1.8:1 in 2006.

Frankly, as far as I am concerned, the Baby Boomers have made their bed as a generation, and they should lie in it. I have personally done all I can for my own family, and it cost me tens of thousands of dollars, an equal number of hours away from my job and children, and I am incensed in having to spend the next 2-3 decades of my life paying (through taxes, etc.) for millions of other elderly. Elderly who somehow managed to be born into and live through the greates era of prosperity and opportunity in human history, and are still in debt, without savings, without the close relationships with their children or peers to care for them, and without any remorse at all for the cost society and future generations will bear for them.

My mother, who is 90, now resides in an ALF. It is a nice environment but it is not home. She misses it, and it is very expensive. We had to take a loan out on the house in order to pay her expensives, and soon the house will have to be sold. Medicare is useless, and Medicaid will not apply until she is broke and destitute. Our futures are even more dismal. Something has gotta give.