Posted on 08/21/2009 6:02:32 AM PDT by WhiteCastle
NHS Worcestershire ruled that Judith Roe, 74, did not qualify for NHS funding because her condition was a "social" rather than "health" problem, even though she was so ill she could not make a cup of tea and regularly left the stove on.
She was forced to sell her £200,000 home to pay her £600-a-week nursing home fees, which would have been funded if she had been categorised correctly. Her son, Richard, 40, urged other families in a similar situation to fight for the care they are entitled to.
He said: "The way the health trust behaved was scandalous. It has been very stressful.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I would say irreversible degeneration of cognitive function is a HEALTH not a social problem.
Baroness Warnock: Dementia sufferers may have a 'duty to die'
A preview of coming attractions...
Paging the folks who are still with AARP: Can't say you weren't warned.
NICE examines stroke, dementia and VTE
From the link....
Alongside stroke, dementia and VTE, quality standards will also be initially developed for neonatal care. The first quality standards are expected to be available early next year, NICE said.
Which puts me in mind of this article...
John Donne
If she's in a nursing home, what does she need the house for, whatever its price?
And losing a limb is an "inconvenience."
Socialized Health Care (obamacare) headed your way my friends.
She might have wanted to hang on to it because the NHS doesn’t cover all of the costs associated with Alzheimers care. And/or maybe her kids/grandkids wanted her to leave the house to them. Maybe that’s what she wanted also.
It appears the NHS isn’t covering any of the costs associated with Alzheimer’s Care.
“I would say irreversible degeneration of cognitive function is a HEALTH not a social problem.”
It certainly is a health problem. It is an organic process, which does not have its origins in behavior but the body’s malfunctioning cells.
Here's Heritage on the same story...
She was forced to sell her £200,000 home to pay her £600-a-week nursing home fees, which would have been funded if she had been categorised correctly.
While I must agree,El Rushbo summed up the most insidious aspect of how each of us would be regarded(by the government)under single-payer,government run healthcare.We would each become a”budget item”!
Healthcare trusts 'not paying for Nice approved drugs'
Four in 10 local healthcare trusts are not funding medications which have been approved by the Government’s drugs rationing body, a new survey shows.
What a charlie foxtrot...
And yet unlike other “budget items” with a built in constituency and the prospect of growing every year out into eternity; your health care will be a “budget item” with a constituency of one that they will be eager to cut.
If she's in a nursing home, what does she need the house for, whatever its price?
The kids want the house, but the state to pay for her care. They couldn't be bothered to care for her. Before Social Security, caring families took in their parents in their later years. They did the caring. They got the estate which they deserved. Now with socialism, the elderly are a burden. Socialism amounts to breaking the bonds of love.
Excellent observation.
It just struck me as a funny sentence: they’d originally specified that she was incompetent to live alone, but implied that the sale of her house was a hardship to a nursing home occupant.
I think people should pay for their own medical care, or their own insurance to cover it, too.
That was my interpretation, too. Not a very charitable judgment of the motives, of course ...
I agree with you. Folks also get more choice and better care if they pay out of their own pockets.
There could be a good reason to hold on to the house. The NHS doesn’t pay for everything. A good idea would have been to put the house in a trust for her care. If she needed the money for her care, it would be there. If not, she could leave it to family.
I can’t wait.
“Family told by NHS: Alzheimer’s is not a ‘health condition’”
Absolutely incredible! No, they’re right—people chose to have dementia. It’s a life choice! What idiots!! /sarc
Healthcare in the UK isn't free. It is paid for through their confiscatory tax policy. Are you saying she shouldn't get what she paid for?
That's probably her only real asset. We don't know how much equity she has in it. And what happens to her when the money is gone?
Meanwhile an indigent immigrant without assets gets free care. This is an incentive to gift your assets to your heirs before you get old.
FWIW, I think a trust is a better idea :)
I guess cancer of the brain would also be a social problem, right? Anyone who wants socialized medicine needs to have some serious brain transplants.
I have a huge problem with a government taking money from everyone and then excluding some people from payment. The richer someone is the more they take from them to pay for health insurance for everyone and then they are making the very ones who footed the bill pay for their treatment out of the money they happen to have left after the government ripped huge chunks of it away from them to pay for other people's care.
To support such a system is very liberal like. The above statement by me points out one of the most fundamental problems with socialized medicine, it is about taking and never giving. They would have made the same prognosis on a poor person as they did with this woman who had a few bucks left in the form of real estate assets.
Socialized medicine is BS and I do not want it.
Ask Baroness Warnock!
Don't be surprised if, when the government needs ever more money, it invalidates the trusts. At least the trusts of the "little people".
[her condition was a “social” rather than “health” problem]
REALLY??? In the final stages the body ‘forgets’ how to breath and causes DEATH.
I would say THAT is a “health problem’.
This isn’t too different from the way some Alzheimer patients are treated in the US, if they don’t have long term care insurance.
In New Jersey, if an Alzeheimer patient needs to be cared for outside of the home, and has no long term health care insurance, the state comes in and take the home and sells it at auction, along with all the person’s belongings and places them in a private nursing home. All the money from the sale is turned over to the nursing home and the nursing home then, often times, drugs the patient into a catatonic state and speeds his death. I know because I have seen it happen.
She doesn’t need the house,obviously, but her heirs probably are upset that the money will be gone. They are not used to having to pay anything for health care in England, so when they do, it is a shock. Long term care insurance is non-existent.
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