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    USA Today has a thought provoking analysis on the cost of Alzheimer's care in Southwest Florida and its impact on families:

    http://www.news-press.com/longform/news/local/alzheimers/2015/01/24/alzheimers-strains-finances-medical-resources/22206733/
    • CommentAuthorInJail
    • CommentTimeJan 26th 2015
     
    Disgraceful. As much as I despise many things about ObamaCare - I think they got it right on the Death Panels. What kind of society blows through this kind of money to preserve life in a body with no functioning brain? Not to mention the suffering of the AD patient that can go on for so many years and the devastation it causes in the health of spouses and other family members.

    As I've said before, I have a lot more respect for Veterinary medicine providers - they will not tolerate prolonged suffering for animals with incurable conditions. I barely survived nine months of care for a seizure horse that came close to killing me, farriers and vets every time he had seizures. In retrospect, as much pain as it caused me to let him go at the time, the vets were absolutely correct to insist we end his life and would have called law enforcement in if I hadn't agreed with their decision.

    I sincerely hope that our society, our medical providers and our government agencies will eventually be forced to employ the same thinking. It will bankrupt the country if they don't.
    • CommentAuthormyrtle*
    • CommentTimeJan 26th 2015 edited
     
    There were and are no such things as "Death Panels," at least as that term is understood by some. The term was coined to describe a proposal to allow a doctor to be paid for the time he or she spends explaining end-of-life choices to people. Those choices do NOT include euthanasia (as a horse would get) or even assisted suicide. The choices are things like foregoing surgery (e.g., if my husband's abdominal aneurism ruptured), foregoing measures like CPR, insertion of a feeding tube or a ventilator, foregoing invasive or painful treatments (e.g, chemotherapy) or diagnostic procedures (e.g., colonoscopies or exploratory surgery), and also includes explaining what is available for comfort care. Without such legal authorization, a doctor cannot be paid for the time he or she spends explaining this stuff to a patient. Some doctors did it anyway, without pay.

    When my husband was admitted to the LTC facility, I hired a geriatric care manger (who is a nurse) to be with me, since I thought I would have a nervous breakdown if I were alone. As it turned out, I had to fill out pages of instructions regarding end-of life choices. Fortunately, the care manger explained all the details of each choice to me. I do not have a medical background, so without her help, I would not have understood the ramifications of each choice. I paid her out of my own pocket, not from any health insurance policy. So I guess I hired my own "Death Panel."
    • CommentAuthormyrtle*
    • CommentTimeJan 26th 2015
     
    The financial strain of Alzheimer's is one of my pet subjects and I would love to know more about the details but I am having trouble reading this on the computer because of its format - the text and pictures keep jumping around on the screen. Does anyone know if there is a way to print it out? I could not find a way to format it for printing.
    • CommentAuthorLFL
    • CommentTimeJan 26th 2015 edited
     
    I agree, it's disgraceful for many reasons...the total lack of understanding of dementia by medical professionals, lawmakers, etc., the total lack of government funding for research, the misperception that Alz and dementia is an "old persons" disease and is therefore not as important as those diseases which affect children, young adults and middle aged people, the total lack of understanding what caregiving spouses must endure physically, emotionally and financially, the devastating financial costs and losses of the well spouse, etc., etc..

    It's eye-opening that a millionaire business woman would be on Medicaid and sharing a room, but at an annual cost of $110,000-$150,000 you can go through a million dollars pretty rapidly. However, excuse me for being a bit cynical, but most people with a million dollars in assets hire attorneys to find a way to shelter the money for their heirs and then go on Medicaid. Makes me wonder if she had significant assets, why didn't her children hire 24/7 in home help? Probably because Medicaid won't pay for in-home care. So, for those of us who have significantly fewer assets and caring for our spouses our burdens are monumental.

    I've written to President Obama, Speaker Boehner, my local congressmen and received form letters thanking me for contacting them. No one seems to be interested in championing the cause anytime soon and in the not to distant future it will be too late and as InJail says, it will bankrupt the country.

    Thanks myrtle for clarifying the term "death panel" since I was sure there was no such thing, just a political scare tactic to defeat the Affordable Care Act.
    • CommentAuthorInJail
    • CommentTimeJan 26th 2015 edited
     
    Myrtle - I don't want to get into a political battle on exactly what ObamaCare has hidden in their documents. I do plenty of that on my political sites.

    I can relate how my mother's situation was handled in 2013 though. She was private pay in a NH, suffered a stroke (because of the Seroquel the NH was plugging her with), was taken to the hospital, which did very little care for her, and shipped her back to the NH before she would have been hospitalized long enough for Medicare to have to pay for a period of NH care. Since she had dementia and was very aggressive (had smuggled knives in that she had hidden in her room), the NH said they were no longer equipped to care for her and we had to not only pay for NH care but had to pay for Hospice care in the NH. They immediately put her on morphine, she could not swallow so had no food or water for almost two weeks and the Hospice people constantly bitched about how long it was taking her to give up and die. If that isn't actions of a Death Panel then I don't know what is. My biggest regret is that my siblings removed the vast array of drugs she had hidden in her home which she intended to use to end her life because she knew her mind was failing her.

    For animals and people there are far worse things than euthanasia, suicide or assisted suicide.
    • CommentAuthormyrtle*
    • CommentTimeJan 27th 2015
     
    InJail, What a horrible string of incompetent and malicious acts your poor mother endured: a stroke caused by Seroquel, the hospital's doing little to care for her, the NH refusing to care for her and Hospice workers constantly complaining about how long it was taking her to die. This sounds like a textbook case of our system's failure to care for patients with skill and compassion.

    I just saw an article that was published in the New York Times that describes a shocking practice: nursing homes that ask to be appointed as guardians for their patients in order to collect money that the patient owes them. If I understand it correctly, this is allowed by NY state law. The link is:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/nyregion/to-collect-debts-nursing-home-seizing-control-over-patients.html
    • CommentAuthorxox
    • CommentTimeJan 27th 2015
     
    I also read that article. It looks like this problem might be specific to NY. The law was to allow a NH to take guardianship if there was no family or the family members were fighting over guardianship. NY seems alone in not providing govt guardianship when all else fails. But it is clear that the 1993 law was never intended to help NH's will bill collection.

    As to the system failing, there really is no system. There are a bunch of systems. I believe that the introduction of for profit Hospices (they were originally nonprofits) has introduced many problems.
    • CommentAuthormyrtle*
    • CommentTimeJan 27th 2015
     
    True. There are a bunch of piecemeal services available to people in various situations but it's up to each person to figure out what they qualify for and then cobble together whatever plan they can. As I've said elsewhere, our system can be described as, "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost."