Some of y'all may know that 94 year old Mom labradog lives with me and Mrs.labradog. Mom is bedridden, and I have been managing her finances as they drain away for her care.
In our region, nursing home care starts at about $72K/year. With the needed meds, groceries, and 14 hour a day home health care, we burn about 2/3 that amount here at home.
An opinion piece from the Boston Globe's Loretta McLaughlin praises a plan Sen. Ted Kennedy has been quietly shepherding through the legislative process. This would provide monetary assistance for at home care for the elderly. A bit more, below the fold.
The article is at the Globe's website.
From the piece by Loretta McLaughlin:
WITH LITTLE FANFARE, a new public program to help pay for long-term care for adults is moving through Congress. The premium is low and the coverage is good.
Largely geared to personal and health services provided in the home, though it extends to nursing home care as a last resort, the new coverage is built into the emerging formula for national healthcare reform.
The need for home care is immense. More than 10 million Americans receive home care, and the number will rise rapidly as the population ages. Estimates hold that 75 percent of us will need home care at some point during our lifetime.
This kind of medical/social service is of inestimable benefit to the chronically ill, the elderly, the mentally disabled, and to adults recuperating from a temporary illness. Home-based personal assistance would allow many of them to return to work. And it would be a godsend for the 90 percent of Americans who have had no meaningful protection against this medical expense.
The program is the brainchild of US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose efforts to secure universal healthcare coverage for all Americans have been the heart and soul of his work in the Senate since the early 1960s.
The right wing caricature of the "limousine liberal" vanishes in the presence of Senator Ted Kennedy, a man who has worked all of his career to bring to us the essential qualities of life. He will so do until the end of his life - a man destined to go out with his hand on the throttle. As the political tide is finally favoring his life's work in health care, he is hammering together the details, let the vidicams whirr at the photo-ops, Tedd Kennedy is trying to make health care work for everyone.