Not sure how old she is, but if it’s financially feasible, consider long term care insurance. Most of these Medicare facilities are horrible. My grandmother depleted every penny she saved for years in Lutheran assisted living facility that was slightly better than a full blown nursing home. Then when her dementia got too bad, on to the nursing home which by then took only a few months she to finish depleting her savings, so on to Medicare and whatever stipend she received from my grandpa being in Marines. Luckily, my mom is a nurse so she got good care (basically from my mom and my mom yelling at the staff for neglect on the few days she was there). I don’t want my parents to go through that. Best of luck to you and your mom.
I once stumbled across the pod people room while working on some equipment in a nursing home. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. Old people with bed sores so bad they were bandaged from head to toe.
Very true. We need to go back to letting people die when their time is naturally up. We've got armies of unionized workers, largely paid with tax dollars, artificially keeping people "alive" for years after they've ceased to have any idea who or where they are, or what century it is, or who their occasional visitors are.
The worst thing is, there is literally no way to opt out of this. You can indicate in an advance medical directive that you don't want to be tube-fed, or put on a ventilator, or resuscitated if your heart stops, and these wishes might be respected (unless a distraught relative suddenly claims you told them you'd changed your mind about that last week).
But if your mind is totally completely gone, and you can't move yourself in bed enough to prevent bedsores, and you try to push the spoon away when somebody insists on feeding you 3 times a day, you will still be kept alive. The person assigned to spoon-feed you will keep shoving the food into your mouth, and (usually) remembering to turn you a few times a day to prevent bedsores, and (usually) changing your diapers fairly regularly, and this can go on for years. The fact that you would rather have all the money this costs go to your children or to your favorite charity or just stay in the public treasury is beside the point.
Yeah the pricing on that blew my mind. I was really scrambling before my grandpa dies becaue it he had last 6 months or so we would have all gone broke. He passed fairly quick but I was selling everyting and ready to max out his reverse mortgage. Something like $10,000 per month. The folks working there tend to make minimum wage and some are great and some are horribe human beings. I believe my grandma was probaby morphined to death becaue after a while she becamse a little difficult to handle. She was discovered dead a 1 or 2 am. Yeah right.
It's enough to make you want to be poor and let the government pay your way. Even in a shitty place around here you would spend roughly $100k for that year. It's like anything else, the rich and poor get what they need and the rest of us pay for it.
Over a third of the american population dies in nursing homes and the average stay before dying is about one year.
Nursing homes are designed to shuffle you from bigger spaces to smaller spaces while they bankrupt you.
Not sure how old she is, but if it’s financially feasible, consider long term care insurance. Most of these Medicare facilities are horrible. My grandmother depleted every penny she saved for years in Lutheran assisted living facility that was slightly better than a full blown nursing home. Then when her dementia got too bad, on to the nursing home which by then took only a few months she to finish depleting her savings, so on to Medicare and whatever stipend she received from my grandpa being in Marines. Luckily, my mom is a nurse so she got good care (basically from my mom and my mom yelling at the staff for neglect on the few days she was there). I don’t want my parents to go through that. Best of luck to you and your mom.
You can’t buy LTC Insurance when you’re at the point of needing it.
Pro tip: the best financial planning tool to implement is a hybrid life insurance/Ltc policy when one is in their late 50s.
I once stumbled across the pod people room while working on some equipment in a nursing home. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. Old people with bed sores so bad they were bandaged from head to toe.
Yeah, its a problem. People used to die in their houses. With dignity. Its a business keeping people alive.
Very true. We need to go back to letting people die when their time is naturally up. We've got armies of unionized workers, largely paid with tax dollars, artificially keeping people "alive" for years after they've ceased to have any idea who or where they are, or what century it is, or who their occasional visitors are.
The worst thing is, there is literally no way to opt out of this. You can indicate in an advance medical directive that you don't want to be tube-fed, or put on a ventilator, or resuscitated if your heart stops, and these wishes might be respected (unless a distraught relative suddenly claims you told them you'd changed your mind about that last week).
But if your mind is totally completely gone, and you can't move yourself in bed enough to prevent bedsores, and you try to push the spoon away when somebody insists on feeding you 3 times a day, you will still be kept alive. The person assigned to spoon-feed you will keep shoving the food into your mouth, and (usually) remembering to turn you a few times a day to prevent bedsores, and (usually) changing your diapers fairly regularly, and this can go on for years. The fact that you would rather have all the money this costs go to your children or to your favorite charity or just stay in the public treasury is beside the point.
Yeah the pricing on that blew my mind. I was really scrambling before my grandpa dies becaue it he had last 6 months or so we would have all gone broke. He passed fairly quick but I was selling everyting and ready to max out his reverse mortgage. Something like $10,000 per month. The folks working there tend to make minimum wage and some are great and some are horribe human beings. I believe my grandma was probaby morphined to death becaue after a while she becamse a little difficult to handle. She was discovered dead a 1 or 2 am. Yeah right.
It's enough to make you want to be poor and let the government pay your way. Even in a shitty place around here you would spend roughly $100k for that year. It's like anything else, the rich and poor get what they need and the rest of us pay for it.