Cost of Elderly Care Is Double Prior Estimates

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times

By JANE GROSS
Published: November 19, 2007

The out-of-pocket cost of caring for an aging parent or spouse averages $5,531 a year, according to the nation’s first in-depth study of such expenses, a sum that is more than double previous estimates and more than the average American household spends each year on health care and entertainment combined.

Family members responsible for ailing loved ones provide not only “hands on” care, but reach often into their own pockets to pay for many other expenses of care recipients, including groceries and household goods, drugs and medical co-payments and transportation, which nudges the average cost of long-distance caregiving to $8,728 a year.

These caregivers, spending on average 10 percent of their household income, manage the financial burden by taking out loans,skipping vacations, dipping into savings or ignoring their own health care.

These findings, and others, come from a telephone survey of 1,000 adults currently caring for someone over the age of 50 who needs help with activities like bathing, preparing meals, shopping or managing finances. It is the first systematic look at out-of-pocket spending among the estimated 34 million Americans providing care for an older (50-plus) family members or friends, and it builds on a landmark 2004 study.

The survey, which will be formally released on Monday and is expected to be the centerpiece of a Capitol Hill briefing a week later, was conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving, a research and policy organization, and Evercare, a division of the United Health Group, which coordinates long-term care for 150,000 clients. The report urges government relief for family caregivers, whether tax deductions, tax credits or other stipends, all of which have stalled in Congress in the past....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/health/19cnd-caregiver.html?hp

[Faygo Kid]

1. Universal health care. Period. This is ridiculous.

Mom depleted all her assets and Medicaid kicked in at that point. She lived out her days in dignity in a high quality nursing home. I would much rather my tax dollars go to health care for your kids and long term care for your parents than to an illegal, immoral war that drains us of $3 billion a week and poisons the soul of our country.

Maybe we could cut the subsidies to the oil industry, while we are at it. Of course none of that will happen, even with a Dem president. The Repukes always seem to win on this one.

Anyway, universal, single payer health care is the way to go, and be done with this crap.

[asjr]

3. The same thing happened with my mother.

All her assets were depleted when medicaid took over. She spent the next 10 years in a decent nursing home. She had Alzheimer's disease and didn't even know where she was, but I am grateful she did have good care. I had a bizarre dream the other night that my sister and I were standing in front of the old home place and wanted to go in. We thought our mother was still in it.

[K Gardner]

7. Amen and Amen

Nothing but single-payer, universal is going to work. We have to tell these "top tier" candidates we will not settle for anything less. Certainly, they cannot sell "mandated" coverage as Universal Coverage and continue to get away with it.

http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org

[MountainLaurel]

9. Absolutely

Mr. Laurel worked with a fellow from one of the Scandinavian countries a few years ago. In one of their conversations, the man was talking about his mother being in a nursing home and how appalled he was that in the U.S., the elderly had no guarantee of being properly cared for after a lifetime of work.

[grasswire]

2. is that in-home care?

Or care in a nursing facility?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. I have re-read the article, and to be honest, I'm not sure. nt

[jwirr]

5. I has to be in-home care as nursing homes are much more than that.

[appleannie1]

6. It has to be in home care. That amount would not cover 6 months

in a nursing home. And having cared for my father, mother and father-in-law, I would say the figure is low if they are bedridden and in diapers.

[THUNDER HANDS]

8. end-of-life care is why health care in general costs so much

universal health care would be a HELL of a lot easier to pull off if it didn't mean extending the lives of 80 year olds who want to live to be 90 year olds.

that's cruel, but it's also the truth.

and with new technology, you're going to be having people living to well over 100. people weren't mean to live that long. You shouldn't spend over half your life as a senior citizen.

[Oak2004]

10. How about you look at the facts before suggesting we kill people

The fact is that, generally, people live for months, not years, once they reach "nursing home" stage, and that this is true regardless of age. Moreover most people remain active and independent through all but the very tail end of their lives, regardless of the age they die at. People are living past 80 these days not because they're being kept alive on some sort of life support, but because they are healthy past that age. Do you actually know very many 80 year olds? Because its hard to imagine you'd make such a statement if you actually did associate with today's 80-somethings.

Do you think I (a disabled person) ought to be allowed to die at my age (50) rather than "extend my life" (I require a lot more medical care than my 80 year old mother)? Do you think a 20-something quad placed in a nursing home because Medicaid and Medicare in many states won't pay for in-home care (even though it is both cheaper and prolongs life) should be allowed to die? Where do you propose declaring people to be "life unworthy of life", and should we move that line whenever it is politically convenient (i.e., to meet temporary budget goals?). And if you don't think it should, exactly how do you propose preventing politicians from, once establishing criteria for killing people through neglect, moving your line for the sake of convenience?

[THUNDER HANDS]

16. I'm not suggesting we kill people, don't misunderstand me

I'm just saying what's driving up the cost of healthcare. Hospitals having to care and treat an increasing elderly population who will not be cured of whatever ailes them, but whose life can be sustained - mostly life in a hospital - with advanced medical care.

I'm not just making this up. My mother, who has been an ICU nurse for 30+ years, told me this.

[Oak2004]

21. Your mother's report is anecdotal

Anecdotes are not worthless if they're used as the beginning of inquiry, but they're awful if they're the end of it. There are two demonstrated problems (as in, identified through objective research) with your mother's observations.

The first is that medical professionals dramatically underestimate quality of life in socially less-valued classes. Persons your mother and her fellows may be identifying as "just being kept alive" might well be going from ICU to regular hospital to home for another ten years before natural death, perhaps with a disability, but disabled people do not have a lesser quality of life. In fact, this is what almost certainly has happened with many of her patients.

The battle now for many of us is to convince the professionals that what they believe they see with their own eyes is simply their own prejudices, and that's very hard to do, as most people refuse to abandon false ideas even when confronted with objective facts to the contrary. This battle is not merely an exercise in asserting the truth for those of us who are disabled -- many disabled people have been and continue to be injured and killed by professionals who deny them necessary medical care on the grounds that it just doesn't matter to treat disabled people because it won't make any difference. I'm one of them.

The other is that, rather than sustaining life indefinitely, insurance companies for at least the last ten years have been pressuring doctors and patients to discontinue care at the earliest opportunity, in fact in many cases far too early. The days when patients were routinely kept on life support for years are long over, replaced instead with the philosophy that dead patients are more profitable than lives saved.

[midlife_mo_Jo]

22. My grandmother is 92 years old

She is a cancer survivor. She was treated ten years ago.

End stage patients should be humanely treated with hospice care. When my grandfather died, hospice came to the house everyday.

[grasswire]

11. the middleman is why health care costs so much

Take out the middleman and administrative costs, institute universal health care with no middleman, and more people will be served. Period.

[Le Taz Hot]

13. Jesus!

Are you serious????? Wow.

[THUNDER HANDS]

17. I'm serious in that...

health care costs are being driven up by end-of-life care. Not the care to keep young or middle-aged people healthy. The care that's provided to those about to die, to keep them alive for a few extra days or months.

[Auntie Bush]

15. Solution:

If people start living to 100...then consider people as senior citizens at age 75 instead of 50. MOST people are really healthy at age 50. Also, if people live to be 100 those at 75 will be healthier.

We could also (though it would be a nasty thing to do...especially if it involved you or someone in your family) DENY access to life support measures for those who will never get well (think PM Sharon or Terry S.) or are very old and will never have any quality of life. That would save a lot on nursing care and hospital expenses. Sounds harsh I know...especially if it's me or my loved one...but there will come a time when it'll be considered a necessary cost saving expense.

Another thing is to cap the age and number of transplants that people can receive. Some children get 4-6 transplanted organs. That would cut down on the number of really elderly. I guess we could call it tough love.

[THUNDER HANDS]

18. if people regularly start living to 100

then Social Security will have to be pushed back to 80. But that's another argument for another topic.

Harsh decisions are going to have to be made in the future. If we want universal health care, then people are going to have to be ready for a MAJOR tax increase to cover it. Because health care costs are only going to go up if people start living longer and when you live longer, the end of your life is going to require more medical care.

Instead of people's bodies breaking down at age 65 and them living to 75 or 80, you're going to see people's bodies breaking down at 65-70 and them living to 100. that's 30 years of advanced medical needs. Do you have any idea how expensive it'll be to provide that much medical care to that many people for that long a time?

[The2ndWheel]

20. Always nice to hear someone else is thinking about the

problems that we'll have to deal with because of aging populations, which we have no previous example to go by.

Retirement age. Fewer people paying to support the system. Fewer people working. Fewer people consuming. Where does the tax money come from to pay for increasing costs? Mass legal immigration? What happens to those countries that you're taking the best and the brightest from? Do they just keep making people so that we can keep our system from falling down? Can we still keep the concept of nation-state if it's a global world where universality is king? How would you run a planet wide system like that? I'm sure there are plenty of questions before and after that point.

It's not all just going to be; hey, everyone lives longer and life gets easier. There will be prices to pay for that. Environmentally, politcally, culturally, economically, etc. We're already seeing that as we speak, we have seen it, and we will continue to see it.

[raouldukelives]

12. A lot of lawyers

Make a lot of money showing rich retired people how to shield assets and qualify for Medicaid.

[Zorra]

14. Quality of life for the "average American" has plummeted under Bu*h/republican

government.

In about every area of life that I can think of.

Bu*h is by far the worst occupant of the White House that we have ever had, and the republicans that rubber stamped all his horrible policies are equally to blame for our great national decline.

[Summer93]

19. Follow the money

Grasswire has the solution. Take out the middleman. The insurance industry is no longer useful to the people but, very very costly to us all.

[windoe]

23. Without military industrial complex

sucking out the country's lifeblood, we would have enough $$ for elder care & universal healthcare, plus education.....our treasury is instead converted to bombs.