Budget Plan1:
You`ve run into the financial scenario I have sadly labeled "Economic Euthanasia". Basically it is the theory that IF you have enough money toward the end of your life, you will live longer; if not, you will pass away sooner. Sounds stupid, morbid, and ethically immoral. But it is a theory that if you can afford the medical and medicinal care that you need in later life, you will indeed live longer.
Once when discussion of this theory was presented to someone in dental waiting area as just idle conversation, a retired doctor overheard this and stated that it is true: almost one half of person`s total lifetime Medicaid payments are made in the last one or two months of life for someone over 78. He new first-hand that this was true based one his experience and observation in taking care of the elderly in the last moments of their life.
It also is tied directly to the quality of life we will have in our late life. Sad to say that your experience of putting someone in the nursing home or even assisted living can quickly eat up their retirement funds and suddenly the estate is garnished (taken over) by Medicare to pay for this care, including personal assets, life insurance policies, and property in their name until they are deemed indigent and unable to pay for their care. Medicare and one`s local social services will decide were the person is cared for and it may not be the facility the family had in mind. Seeing them in such a facility can be traumatic to a family, and, as you accurately called it , "warehoused there".
My now deceased mother-in-law had her father go from an assisted living to a nursing home after he suffered considerably from dementia. It was to the point where he did not recognize his own daughter and would sometimes cuss or even spit at her when she came to visit him. I asked her "Why do you even see him, then, and put yourself through that experience?" Her answer was, "He may not know who I am, but KNOW that person is still my dad." We should all be so fortunate to have someone in our family think of us and care about seeing us in that way late in life! She truly was the epitome of "Honor thy father and thy mother" and that this type of love was a life-long commitment and not just some commandment to be exercised in one`s youth growing up under their parent`s care.
