with only MA, i take it that no SS means they never worked in their life, nor were they ever married long enough to get their husbands SS either...???
Posted on 06/07/2010 1:35:31 PM PDT by Clint Williams
The gist of the problem seems to be that the affected residents suffered from an unexpected or unpleasant relocation.
None of them suffered from a lack of service. The so called trauma seems to be a stretch of the author's wont of an unpleasant theme.
yitbos
I think he bit his tongue...
with only MA, i take it that no SS means they never worked in their life, nor were they ever married long enough to get their husbands SS either...???
I am not totally sure which gov’t program actually pays a family member to care for elderly or disabled
but yes even in Penn you can get paid to care for a family member.
It is only about $ 10.00 a hour.
“The evicted residents paid their way with Medicaid...”
What?? If they “paid their way”, then why in #### were they on Medicaid??
Medicare and Medicaid are public third-party payors. Medicaid will kick in once all your savings and money is just about gone (literally), a bad case scenario when a couple has investments, savings, property and one needs long term care while the other is still able to live in the family home. Some states will pay a small amount to caregivers but not all. Mostly it will cover some in-home care which doesn’t amount to much (an hour or so a day) if the person needs 24/7 care.
One of the problems when you’re 99 is that your kids are probably in their late 70s and may be unable to care for a parent themselves. Shoot, they may be in a nursing home. Or maybe there never were any children.
When my grandmother became very sick at 89 and unable to live on her own, all options were explored. Having one of her daughters care for her would have meant moving her 800 miles away from the little Northern Maine town she’d lived in all her life, away from still-living siblings and nieces, nephews and SILs, to a townhouse where she couldn’t have climbed the stairs to bathe (only half-bath downstairs). Where she knew no one who would visit during the day as they did where she’d lived, and being on her own all day as my mother still had to work (being only 58 herself). Or a nursing home very nearby where she lived, where local family could visit often and she knew many of the staff members. She ended up passing away before a decision had to be made but it’s not an easy choice either way and it’s not always just because the family doesn’t want to be bothered.
It was much easier when there were family members home all day to help care for someone.
Medicaid pays so little for resident care (Medicare pays none) that you can't even afford to staff these centers anymore unless you have a majority self pay, small minority Medicaid, and they must have reached that tipping point.
It also points out in the article, that each resident (with the help of the centers administration) has found alternative places to reside, and not one person is being kicked to the corner.
or did these folks lose their medicare and got the boot??
Well unfortunately yes. The .gov will pay you to do your family duty this day and age. I see alot of elderly being poorly cared for at home by gradchildren who steal grannies pain meds etc. But see it saves .gov money. Cause ALOT of the elderly have no one to care for them out of love just money. And .gov pays a nursing home poorly. Very poorly.
Your story is similar most. Fewer children, fewer choices. Add to that the fact that families scatter complicates the situation.
The baby boomers are getting older. The government is broke. I do not even want to think about what is going to happen to them as they begin to overwhelm the system.
As a side note, my own mother lived with one of us until she died. My wife’s mother lives within a half a mile of us. She wants to be independent. But when she is unable to care for herself she has a room in our home.
“None of them suffered from a lack of service.”
Yet !
Hope everything worked out for them. You seem to be doubting the notion that cutbacks and rationing are going to happen. They will. If we don’t repeal this Obamacare bill in its entirety people are going to die, People that would have otherwise lived longer and happier. If we don’t get government out of health care my only advise is don’t get older and don’t get sick. Free insurance does you little good when there’s no treatment to be had.
The article and the method chosen by the author to make his point, including his examples, was the subject of the comment.
Comments on this article hardly need assumptions on what is not written by participants in the discussion.
yitbos
I will take your word for it. I was really just making the point that all seems to be quiet about health care but the reality is the greatest health care system in the world is going to be destroyed. People WILL be turned away in the very near future. People will suffer needlessly and people will die. By the time the American people realize they’ve been had it will be too late. Your doctor will be retired and the office will be boarded up.
On April 17, 2009, the Public Advocate revealed the results of an 18-month investigation of the involuntary discharge practices of Assisted Living Concepts facilities in New Jersey. The Public Advocate found the company broke its promises to elderly residents by allowing them to believe they could convert to Medicaid when their life savings were depleted. Instead, the company instituted a policy of involuntarily discharging elderly residents once they had spent-down all of their life savings, leaving them essentially destitute.
Robertson (age 99) hadn’t broken the rules at Franklin House. Instead, after paying her own way for years, she ran out of money and had to enroll in Medicaid, the government program that funds health services for low-income people. But the facility, in Sumner, didn’t want more Medicaid patients.
It’s a problem that is expected to grow as assisted-living facilities grapple with a financial reality: They earn less from Medicaid than they do from private-paying clients.
Under his mother’s current contract, room and board is $149 per day.
Over about nine years, Cordelia Robertson has paid Franklin House about $330,000, the family said. “She now has zero money,” her son said.
For years, he has worried that his mother would outlast her money, so he repeatedly asked the manager about it.
Each time, according to Gene Robertson, the manager assured him that enrolling in Medicaid, if it came to that, would be a “seamless transfer.” His mother would even get to stay in her own room.
With that assurance — and since Robertson was comfortable at the facility — her family kept renewing her contracts. Without that assurance, she likely would have moved.
In May 2007, Robertson received a letter from the facility stating that it had reached its maximum number of Medicaid beds, and that in the future, residents who convert to Medicaid might not be able to stay. Gene Robertson began to worry.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004456265_eviction04m.html
According to Bill Moss, director of the state’s Home and Community Services Division, assisted-living facilities get between $65 and $163 a day for each Medicaid patient, depending on the level of care.
The industry says it doesn’t make money on these clients. Instead, each Medicaid client costs a facility $25 to $28 per day, according to Gary Weeks, executive director of the Washington Health Care Association.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004456265_eviction04m.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.