When my dear 92-year-old father was on a home hospice program in my home for the last 2 1/2 years of his life, the program (funded by Medicare) sent in CNA's who were kind, dedicated, competent, and doing physically demanding, essential services for my very debilitated father. I was dismayed to find out they themselves were getting almost no benefits, and really low wages.
I was very grateful to them but it was an eye-opener for sure.
If you want to find the root of almost any problem, you have to look at government. Government interference in health care, insurance, and care for the elderly has produced the same sorry results that all government programs produce. We have declining quality, less access, and increasing costs. If the free market had been allowed to work (and if Social Security and Medicare had not convinced people that they need not plan for themselves, because Uncle Sam would take care of them), then the situation would be much different than it is now. There will always be problems, but government always makes problems worse.
Medicare or medicaid?
Once again I don’t think medicare pays for long term nursing care, that is medicaid when all the patient’s and his/her spouses assets are gone.
Here in Maryland a nursing home charges $6K a month or $72K per year to medicaid. But of course the state government drives up the cost of labor without getting better service. Better to get a private contractor who wants to work off the books.
So this German idea might not be bad.
Mrs. Don-o, I am sorry about your father.
My mother is 95 now, still drives, but it is time to update the durable powers of attorney (financial and health) and think seriously about care decisions that can’t be far into the future. I just noticed today that she already has a Catholic Advance Directive completed (who knows whether the hospital will honor this).
I really need to find out about home care options such as the home hospice program (for later). She is fortunate to have state employee’s medical insurance as well as my late father’s policy still as a secondary (going to look into that tomorrow). And Medicare, I guess?
She is close to the point where I will have to start at least overseeing things like rent payments and insurance coordination, although she’s done quite well on her own so far. But short term memory lapses are becoming apparent (e.g. she decorated her house nicely for Christmas but went out to dinner by herself Christmas after church, forgetting she was going to get together with us (we had discussed the plans fully on Christmas Eve)).
We always have to give thanks for every single day our parents remain with us, even on the more difficult days.