[nyokodo]

> the extensive and expensive care of their elders.

Granted cognitive decline and other conditions are extremely difficult to manage, however it’s remarkable how easy and cheap a disturbingly large chunk of elder care is. Just someone there to make sure elders take their meds on time, monitor their blood pressure, making sure they’re eating or go to the doctor if anything bothers them etc; all these tasks could be done in-home with family, or minimally trained healthcare workers. We could even pay families and healthcare workers handsomely and we’d still save massive amounts on the outrageous expense in elder quality-of-life and healthcare expenditure we pay because those simple interventions aren’t made.

[lazide]

I take it you haven’t actually tried to do this? I’ve been involved in several instances of trying to do this now, and it varies from nearly a full time job to 2 full time jobs for anyone who would be otherwise going to a home - and often scary, stressful, and traumatizing to boot.

[nyokodo]

> I take it you haven’t actually tried to do this?

What is “this?” I’m talking about cheap and simple early interventions that delay or even avoid needing to put elders in a home by avoiding the negative effects of badly managed healthcare. Incidentally, this level of care is the vast majority elder care that gets no funding or attention; instead, the focus is put on the hard cases or intervention when it’s too late and too difficult. What are you talking about?

[lazide]

The ‘this’ is taking care of someone who is declining or needs assistance for daily living - added on to the responsibilities of one of their children, which is how I read your comment.

The difficult situations I’m talking about were folks who didn’t need emergency intervention and weren’t hard cases. Rather folks who would wander out side the home looking for yard work to do and then hurt themselves because they thought they were 20, or who would try to go to union hall (that they used to go to), and then get lost on the way.

Those situations were much, much harder to handle than they looked from the outside, and caused immense stress on the caregivers relationship with their spouse (and them), required full time attention (which means no job and fewer social events or other outside activities), and while yes placed less strain on ‘the system’, were an immense strain on the people involved.

They still ended up having to go to care homes, as it eventually (after 5ish years) was too crushing a load.

[nyokodo]

> because they thought they were 20

That is a hard case, one that I originally explicitly called out as extremely difficult to handle. So your criticism is unfounded.

[lazide]

Certainly not in the opinion of the Dr's or insurance companies, who didn't think he should be or needed to be in a dedicated nursing home.

So perhaps you're jumping to conclusions?

Near as I could tell, the only difficult cases they felt should be in nursing homes were those that were violent, non-compliant with direction, prone to escape (not in this sense which is a 'hey, I want to do x', but will listen if you catch him), but the type that will actively try to bypass security measures, or unable to care for themselves in major ways (like lock in syndrome, inability to follow directions, inability to recognize basic environmental factors, etc.).

Are there potentially easier cases where they are 100% fully functional, yet in nursing homes? Maybe I guess, but I didn't run across any when I was visiting them later. All had some significant cognitive issues that made them very difficult to care for in some major way. But then, this is in California where it is extremely expensive for nursing home care ($3-5k/mo last I remember).