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 ...
The article says he moved to India with his parents.
“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.”
Read the article. The son moved to India with his parents.
At some point some enterprising Indians are going to start retirement communities in India for US citizens. Past some critical size (say a few thousand retirees in the complex, with its own shopping carrying western-style brands), I think a number of retirees would be interested in being able to stretch their social security checks in an environment that’s similar to home
I wonder how much the fact that both parents had Parkinson's played into his decision? When patients reach a certain stage they don't know or care where they are or who visits them.
I could never do what he did, because I would know.
I didn’t open up the article until you pointed this out. As you say, pobodys nerfect.
India, with it's modern, western trained doctors and health care, is becoming a sort of health care retreat for many.
There's stories of people in Britain who are facing months to year long waits for medical treatment like bypass surgery or even some cancers, are travelling to India for less expensive, but equal if not better care. Their only other option is to pay x10-100 more to have it sone outside the system in the UK.
Socialized medicine would have kept them here at taxpayers’ expense. Sounds like a plan to me.
vaudine
Stories like this always bring to mind the movie Happy Gilmore and the nursing home with Ben Stiller as the orderly.
Yep. If Mexico wasn’t so utterly corrupt, it would be the perfect place for such ventures too. But buy Mexican property and you don’t know when the Federales are going to come and evict you from El Presidente’s newest condo complex.
**psstsoylentgreenispeople**
Great idea ! Let’s use socialized medicine to make the taxpayers foot the bill. Perfect !
The Peoples' Republic of California already sends a certain percentage of its hospital patients to Mexico to save money. Ironically, one cause of the budget crunch is providing free treatment to illegal aliens.
Having personally had to deal with nursing homes for my father, my grandmother, and my wife’s mother, I can attest that the treatment you get here is, unless you really stay on them, absolutely horrible. The stench will get to you in some of these. Patient abuse, lack of care, untrained employees, all so they can cut their costs and make more bucks.
“Socialized healthcare” won’t solve the problem here. It’s the attitude of the management of these facilities, and the attitude is: we don’t give a hoot. Just show us the money.
If India provides quality care for less, fine. Sign me up when I get older. Otherwise, I’m not going in one.
No, I want the one with the daily massages and such. :)
I didn't write the rules, nor am I suggesting a change in them. The simple fact is that if someone (of any age) runs out of money and has insufficient income, they are eligible for Medicaid payments for their medical bills (including nursing homes). Children and other relatives of sick adults are not legally responsible for the care of their relatives (whatever their moral responsibility is - and I believe there to be one). This is simply the way things are, period. You want that changed, write to your Congressman and Senators - and good luck, you'll need it.
Yeah, I noticed (under the fold, so to speak). It does change things.
That being said, I'll bet that there will be people who will see this article and send senile, bedridden parents to India or some other faraway land that's cheaper than here, just to save money - and they, unlike this guy, WON'T move with the patient.
Look at the posts above your post. He is living in India with them.
He is with his parents during their twilight and they are getting better care than he could give or they could afford. Much better than applying for government money and dumping them in a medicaide nursing home.
Did you read the article? He is there with them, and is not working a regular job, but managing their care.
The other simple fact is that the majority of the homes that accept Medicaid as payment for their services are places where you would not want to send your aging parents.
The care is substandard to put it mildly.
In this case they are getting what sounds like very high quality care including excellent nutrition and physical therapy.
It would not be for everybody but for those who can pull up stakes and make the trip this is a fine alternative.
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