She needs way more than that too, but the money just isn't there. The entire situation is frustrating, exhausting and hopeless. She didn't provide for herself to live this long and probably will deteriorate over the next decade while we continue to not be able to provide her with good enough care.
Looking ahead to the later years of my own life, I don't have any family to take care of me and don't expect to be wealthy. I'm looking at assisted suicide as the way out of that kind of aging. Honestly it all seems a bit fucked.
I’ve often had the conversation with Finns who are envious of American 401k balances. But they fail to see the real value of a national pension system that is guaranteed to pay roughly 52% of your last salary for the rest of your life, and a healthcare system that guarantees that the expensive cancer you get won’t mean selling your house.
Not having to think about whether you’ll be bankrupt at 80 is a kind of freedom too.
This is also true in some parts Europe. Retirement home is very expensive, and the service is usually mediocre at best. There's also been the same kind of stories with some kindergartens lately.
On many services, we're much better off than the US, but when it comes to retirement homes, we're very bad aswell.
Maybe it was different before 2008, but since then in the age of "austerity" I wouldn't want to be old, sick, and alone in Europe.
It was plain during Covid. For most American media, the real news wasn’t how elderly people were dying like flies, but how somebody was forced to wear a mask.
https://www.medicare.gov/care-compare/?redirect=true&provide...
The costs involved are mind-boggling. You'd think that $100k+ a year should basically buy you personal round-the-clock care in your own home. But either there are not enough people interested in the career or too many rules to make such a deal. (Heck, why can't she just pay her own children to take care of her?)
Baby boomers are just now starting to enter retirement homes and think about end-of-life care. It's bad enough now, but things are going to get so much worse.
My grandfather died of cancer before he was 75. I don’t know what it was, but the symptoms and his rapid decline were horrific.
My father died of multiple myeloma before he was 75. He was lucky not to suffer chemo, but from diagnosis to death took 14 months.
Now I have started observing the same symptoms which my father had at my age and have started planning ahead. I’m too cowardly to get a checkup.
But I’m not going to waste 90% of my retirement savings on cancer treatment, of all things. Would rather leave it for the next generation.
I had a doctor friend who put it succinctly: "You want to die of heart failure. It's relatively painless, it's instant, and it's cheap. But heart disease is so easily preventable in a controlled environment that we can drag out lives much longer than they should be lived."
In a nursing home, they are obsessed with low fat, low sodium, heart-healthy diets. But you should consider a retirement of red meats and high activity.
But even as the dementia (of my grandmother) progressed, the care facility was simply too understaffed and over capacity to take them in - it took us around a year to finally find a room.
Luckily the care they received there was good - but my plan is the following: If I get diagnosed with dementia, I'm going to end it on my own terms. Having witnessed dementia up-close as a caregiver, and then see other dementia patients...it is not a life. The person becomes an empty shell / husk of themselves.
I guess maybe that doesn't account for profits being made by any contractors providing medicines, food, etc, which maybe could be done more cheaply without the profit motive. But 10% just doesn't scream "evil nursing home executives getting fat off of the elderly" to me.
It's a labor-intensive and difficult service to provide. The article's suggestion to professionalize care work seems right, but will increase costs. The two areas of dissatisfaction (high cost and poor quality) seem fundamentally at odds to me, are there proposals which would address them both?
steamrolled•3h ago
This industry is driven solely by demand and there are highly-developed countries where it doesn't exist, or doesn't exist on this scale, simply because of different social norms and taboos.
What's the outcome we're hoping for? We're talking elderly folks we'd rather not care for ourselves and that we don't want to watch declining and dying, and we're dumping them into a large-scale... well, death facility.
EPWN3D•2h ago
Caring for the elderly who cannot care for themselves is a full-time job that requires more than a little bit of specialized medical expertise. Throw a 3 year-old into that environment, and it's a recipe for disaster, injury, and marital dysfunction.
evklein•2h ago
This is pretty cynical. Not everyone puts their aging relative into a home because they want to make it someone else's problem. Taking care of elderly people is basically a full-time job. It's not easy to drop every other responsibility in your life (work, children) and focus on deathcare for someone else.
> there are highly-developed countries where it doesn't exist, or doesn't exist on this scale, simply because of different social norms and taboos
Are we sure this isn't because these countries regulate these industries in such a way that people actually want to work for these places and patients don't get gauged?
> What's the outcome we're hoping for?
The outcome is the same (death), but how you get here is what the central complaint is. Elderly people pay a shit ton and you don't even get the basic services agreed to by the other party - maybe if they're shelling out $11,000 a month they should be. Nursing homes have effectively become a scam, but they do not have to be.
busterarm•2h ago
I have a coworker with both his elderly parents and his wife's elderly parents. All four of them are deteriorating rapidly and need constant care and hospital visits. On top of that he has two sick, aging dogs.
We commiserate about the multiple full-time jobs that we have, but seriously he has it unfathomably worse than I do. I'm stressed to my limit and can't even imagine where he's at.
EA-3167•1h ago
spacemadness•2h ago
rawgabbit•1h ago
The good thing is that we were able to keep her in own home and get her on medicaid. She had exhausted all of her funds already. Medicaid pays for a nurse to check on her weekly. Medicaid also pays for "attendant services" to remind her to take her medication, get in and out of the shower, and keep the house presentable. A charity and my wife brings prepared meals that the attendant heats up. My MIL is a handful. She is abusive to everyone, screaming/shouting/argumentative non-stop, and quickly forgets what she just said.
We know one day, we will have to send her to a nursing home where they will likely sedate her with meds. We are trying to keep her in own home. And she argues about that as well. We actually had a one month argument where she demanded to be sent to a nursing home. When we told her that the one she named was cited for abusing patients, she kept arguing.