Yeah but have you ever tried to care for aging parents outside of a retirement community, sucks all your time, money, and energy leaving nothing else for the rest of your family. End of life care is a great place to extract wealth if you’re heartless. People are their most scared and vulnerable, they’ll pay anything to feel normal for just a little while longer
Yes, my mother has advanced Parkinson’s and I was her primary caretaker for years before we finally had to move her into assisted living. I know very well how ill-equipped our society is for elder care.
People always talk about how it takes a village to raise a child, but we rarely talk about the village required to care for our elders.
Personally, I would rather kill myself than end up in a facility like my mom is in.
The sad part is, it’s one of the best facilities around in a very HCOL area. We pay $8000 per month just for room and board. When she needs more care that price will increase. You’d think with ~100 residents all paying at least that much that the place would be really good, right? But the staff is all paid minimum wage so they can’t hire people to provide the basic services they advertise, like transportation. The meals are all made from institutional wholesale ingredients like liquid “eggs”, frozen meat and vegetables, and red delicious apples.
My mom has been burgled by staff and ignored by caregivers while she was stuck on the toilet because the understaffing issue is so bad.
Most of the staff are great people, but the owners are making so much money that they could breed like rabbits and their great-great-grandchildren would never have to lift a finger in their lives.
Well like, what other options are there? Most retirement communities have been bought out by Atria or Life Care Services, stripped of anything that made them special and unique, then had their prices jacked way up. For elderly people they can either A) spend the money all the they could give as inheritance, and take on debt to live in the only places capable of supporting you, or B) kill yourself, give your children as much inheritance as possible and hope that you making that decision means your kids might not have to do the same when it’s their turn.
The best option is not to allow corporations to buy up and run assisted living centers to maximize profit. It is apparent that the US government should also be subsidizing and highly monitoring these facilities. They should have strict requirements for activities and care, no more laissez-faire regulating.
When I was in college I had a cohort and one of my colleagues was from an Eastern European country. He was married and had a few kids. He was trying to find a good daycare and came to me very confused.
He said that daycare where he was from was free and very high quality. They had set curriculum, good food, and the government checked in weekly to make sure the facilities were run correctly. He asked why all the US daycares were run down, no curriculum, poor food, poor worker pay, and also extremely expensive.
Here is a guy from a country we would probably look down upon just flabbergasted by our shitty daycare system. It was a real eye opener for me. Needless to say it is entirely possible to improve these facilities.
I think you are right though, unless we start trying to fix these problems holding our breathe is not going to help.
Yeah but have you ever tried to care for aging parents outside of a retirement community, sucks all your time, money, and energy leaving nothing else for the rest of your family. End of life care is a great place to extract wealth if you’re heartless. People are their most scared and vulnerable, they’ll pay anything to feel normal for just a little while longer
Yes, my mother has advanced Parkinson’s and I was her primary caretaker for years before we finally had to move her into assisted living. I know very well how ill-equipped our society is for elder care.
People always talk about how it takes a village to raise a child, but we rarely talk about the village required to care for our elders.
Personally, I would rather kill myself than end up in a facility like my mom is in.
I think it says a lot when people remark they would rather be dead than in a assisted care facility. Something is clearly wrong with our system.
The sad part is, it’s one of the best facilities around in a very HCOL area. We pay $8000 per month just for room and board. When she needs more care that price will increase. You’d think with ~100 residents all paying at least that much that the place would be really good, right? But the staff is all paid minimum wage so they can’t hire people to provide the basic services they advertise, like transportation. The meals are all made from institutional wholesale ingredients like liquid “eggs”, frozen meat and vegetables, and red delicious apples.
My mom has been burgled by staff and ignored by caregivers while she was stuck on the toilet because the understaffing issue is so bad.
Most of the staff are great people, but the owners are making so much money that they could breed like rabbits and their great-great-grandchildren would never have to lift a finger in their lives.
Well like, what other options are there? Most retirement communities have been bought out by Atria or Life Care Services, stripped of anything that made them special and unique, then had their prices jacked way up. For elderly people they can either A) spend the money all the they could give as inheritance, and take on debt to live in the only places capable of supporting you, or B) kill yourself, give your children as much inheritance as possible and hope that you making that decision means your kids might not have to do the same when it’s their turn.
The best option is not to allow corporations to buy up and run assisted living centers to maximize profit. It is apparent that the US government should also be subsidizing and highly monitoring these facilities. They should have strict requirements for activities and care, no more laissez-faire regulating.
It’s the best option, and if you can figure out a way to do it I wish you all the luck in the universe. I won’t be holding my breath. No offense.
When I was in college I had a cohort and one of my colleagues was from an Eastern European country. He was married and had a few kids. He was trying to find a good daycare and came to me very confused.
He said that daycare where he was from was free and very high quality. They had set curriculum, good food, and the government checked in weekly to make sure the facilities were run correctly. He asked why all the US daycares were run down, no curriculum, poor food, poor worker pay, and also extremely expensive.
Here is a guy from a country we would probably look down upon just flabbergasted by our shitty daycare system. It was a real eye opener for me. Needless to say it is entirely possible to improve these facilities.
I think you are right though, unless we start trying to fix these problems holding our breathe is not going to help.