Was caught by
CATO's thoughts on the Fed pulling back on a loophole states use to steal a bit more federal money to pay Medicaid bills for nursing homes.
article said:
Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the warnings from nursing homes are overwrought. Public funds shouldn’t be the default payment for elder care, he said.
The existing system dissuades people with financial means from saving for nursing home care and undercuts the incentive for more affordable long-term insurance options to enter the market, Cannon said.
“This is a completely selfish shortsighted pleading by an inefficient industry that government has propped up for decades,” Cannon said. “And it’s now begging Congress to please keep putting future generations in debt to pay high-cost, low-quality providers.”
What the fuck is wrong with these people? Long-term insurance options?! Inefficient industry? High-cost? It's old people! You can't take care of old people properly and have it be inexpensive. I thought everyone knew that. Jebus... he'll be whining about Hospice next!
Should states be allowed to get away with *wink wink*'ing a little more federal coverage? I'd say not. States should foot that money. Why are people against footing this money? Does anyone not know how expensive late-term care is?!
I guess when you're been making about 8 bucks an hour, you're supposed to save enough money for that nursing home that now averages about 110K per year, if you aren't eligible for M'caid. Besides that, if you do have any money, you have to pay it all down, other than about 2 or 3 grand, depending on which state you live in, before you become eligible for M'caid. Some nursing homes and ALFs don't even take M'caid because it pays quite a big less than private pay. I used to listen to the owners of the place where I worked bitch about their M'caid residents. It was sold out to a corporation when the husband died and I'm not sure the place even takes new M'caid residents. So, it's not even easy to find a place that takes M'caid.
How do I know all this? I worked in long term care for 18 years and about half of my patients were on M'caid and the rest were spending down their savings, and most of them died before they became eligible for M'caid. My own mom was in a nursing home for 2 years and it cost her over 200 grand. She would have had to live about another 8 years before all of her money was gone. Plus, if you're income is too high to be eligible for M'caid, you're totally screwed. In Georgia, if you made more than about 2000 per month, when I retired 6 years ago, you were screwed because the minimum monthly charge for a semi-private room was about 3000 per month. At that time, you couldn't make more than about 2K per month to be eligible for M'caid. That was in assisted living. It's much higher in a skilled nursing home.
Plus in a lot of states, the majority of the aides are immigrants, so sure, let's deport all those folks so that the only option for frail older adults is suicide or death due to neglect. The only ones that make somewhat decent salaries are unionized, which is rare these days.
And yeah. Long term care insurance is not only very expensive, it usually only covers about 3 years of care, so if you live longer than that in long term care, as most of my former patients did, again you're screwed unless you've got kids that are willing to care for. you, and believe me, that isn't an easy job. I've seen it as a home health nurse, along with a lot of neglect and abuse. Some people aren't cut out for the job, which is why we have M'caid to help when your money runs out, assuming you had any in the beginning.
My sister tried to care for our mom in her home and she was obviously in way over her head. I finally convinced her to find a good nursing home for her. Btw, those are rare, so the least they could do is legalize voluntary euthanasia so we'd all have an easy way out.
The cruelty never stops, does it? Libertarians are probably the worst when it comes to selfishness, ignorance and cruelty.
