Posted on 08/08/2007 12:45:06 PM PDT by voletti
Pondicherry, India —- After three years of caring for his increasingly ailing mother and father in their Florida retirement home, Steve Herzfeld was exhausted and faced with spending his family's last resources to put the couple in a cheap nursing home.
So he made what he saw as the only sensible decision: He outsourced his parents to India.
Today his 89-year-old mother, Frances, who suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease, gets daily massages, physical therapy and 24-hour help getting to the bathroom, all for about $15 a day. His father, Ernest, 93, an Alzheimer's patient, has a full-time personal assistant and a cook who has won him over to a vegetarian diet healthy enough that he no longer needs his cholesterol medication.
Best of all, the plentiful drugs the couple require cost less than 20 percent of what they do at home, and salaries for their six-person staff are so cheap that the pair now bank $1,000 a month of their $3,000 Social Security payment. They aim to use the savings as an emergency fund, or to pay for airline tickets if family members want to visit.
"I wouldn't say it's a solution for everybody, but I consider it the best solution to our problem," said Herzfeld, 56, a management expert who made the move to India with his parents, and now, as "care manager rather than the actual worker," has time for things like bike rides to the grocery and strolls in the botanical gardens with his father.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I think that this story is a play for socialized medicine. Especially with the "rising costs of medicine" etc etc etc quotes.
I also think that...if the level of care is there, and everyone involved wants to do it...why not?
He probably can’t sue for malpractice if something goes wrong; but, 99% of his parents’ peers here in the US probably aren’t looking for someone to sue anyway. It’s the 1% who think they’ve found the gravy train who drive up costs here.
I hear they curry to every need.
Wow, something new to threaten my mother with. She’ll behave for a while, and then I’ll have to come up with another new threat. She’s still worried about that nursing home I saw on 60 Minutes years ago.
lol
Actually, it's a hint of things to come, and a potential gold mine for India (especially if socialized medicine actually does come to America). It might be time to do a little research on investment in healthcare-related companies there ...
When you consider that half the doctors in this country are Indians anyway, I'm not sure there's any disadvantage to getting your medical work done abroad ... except for the long plane ride.
BTTT
Turn the knowledge learned from the illegal immigration to your advantage. Oh the humanity.
I think that India is a long way to travel, especially for people that have health difficulties. I also think that chasing cheap labor is a quick way for people to lose a lot of money...I worked in the textile industry and watched an awful lot go over the border - to the detriment of quality and eventual loss of money (Mexico was cheap in the 90s, now Vietnam and the Phillipenes are cheaper, albeit with different considerations than Mexico).
I'd be interested to see what Socialized Medicine in America does to the medical industry in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, etc. Would be interesting to see people - doctors especially!! - going the other way across the border.
The air in Mumbai is so polluted I get a sinus infection just thinking about it.
Not sure what to think here!
On the one hand, as a computer support geek, outsourcing to India has put a very noticable dent in my job prospects over the last few years. In the 1990s, I was constantly receiving job offers. Now I have trouble getting interviews.
On the other, from 2000 to 2004 I was the sole caregiver for my father after his stroke. 24x7x365, with a minor break if I could find a friend to watch him while I went to the store.
It was physically and mentally draining. Tube feeding, crushing his rock-hard pills to pump through his feeding tube, bathing him, cleaning him and changing him after movements, transfering him to his chair, turning his fan up, turning it down, finding his TV remote lost in his bedcovers.
I imagine as a regular, 40 hours a week job, go home when you are done, it would still be tough. But when you are CONSTANTLY on call, getting woken when your patient is banging the floor with his cane at 3:00am because he can’t find the remote...it can get crushing!
Sorry, but I think this disgusting. If the man couldn't care for his parents because it was too much of a burden for his life - well fine, OK, I can understand that. However, the money aspect of this makes no sense - morally. If his parents had less than $2,000 left and put their Social Security payments into a "Miller Trust" they'd be eligible for Medicaid payments to the nursing home, and Herzfeld could locate them nearby so he could visit them. None of HIS financial resources would be needed to pay for their housing, drugs or care.
Best of all, the plentiful drugs the couple require cost less than 20 percent of what they do at home, and salaries for their six-person staff are so cheap that the pair now bank $1,000 a month of their $3,000 Social Security payment.
Here you go - the SOB is more interested in getting an inheritance than in being near his parents in their time of gravest need. What a caring, loving son (hawk, spit).
Either they severely mistreated him as a child, or he got an extra helping of the extremely self-centered, spoiled baby-boomer gene. I vote for the latter. This guy makes me sick.
hahhahahahaha.....
Might want to travel across India and take a look at a lot of their medical facilities before you make such bold statements.
Yes, they have some top notch facilities.... and they have lots of third rate ones.
Read the article. He moved to India with them.
He moved to INDIA with his parents.. he is there for their time of need. He didn’t just ship them over there and stayed here.
My parents can stay here. I'm going!
I can't disagree with you on that - as I mentioned in my post #15. HOWEVER, that is what a nursing home is for. The man wouldn't have to pay one dime out of his pocket if he put them in one and they ran through their money. The issue is that he doesn't want them to run through their money, and actually is enjoying the fact that they're being in India is allowing for an increase in their net worth. He'd rather have them half-way around the world and building up his inheritance than nearby where he could visit them but without any money at the end. He views them only as sacks of flesh that produce money, not as his parents. DISGUSTING!!!
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