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.

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.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana

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?