Longevity For Better or Worse

Longevity

   Longevity, excellent fortune in some cultures, is so for elders who are reasonably well, active, financially independent, creatively involved and/or pursuing work they love.  You are in good company, if the Old Folks Home and the Nursing Home evoke ugly specters from America's past. We've progressed from the almshouse to the old folks home or nursing home, to care which is meant to encourage the highest level of independence, dignity of choice and quality of life we can achieve. Overcoming history, however, is a painfully gradual process, rife with errors and failures. Enter the Assisted Living Facility. Even with the advent of assisted care, Medicaid has come under fire for having a tendency to keep people in nursing homes.

 Assisted living facilities (ALFs) gained tremendous popularity in the 1990s, as part of the continuum of care for people who did not require skilled, around-the-clock nursing care, but were not able to live independently. The idea was to provide supervision and help with activities of everyday life (including, for some, personal care, as well as the supervision/dispensing of medications by trained staff.) Assisted living was widely promoted as a philosophy of care and service intended to honor "independence and dignity." It sounded like a fine idea to keep nursing homes from being society's dumping grounds.

    If you have not watched the PBS documentary, "Living and Dying in Assisted Care," do so. Better yet, ProPublica has published a four-part series. I provide links here: 

http://www.propublica.org/article/emeritus-1-the-emerald-city

http://www.propublica.org/article/emeritus-2-theyre-not-treating-mom-well
http://www.propublica.org/article/emeritus-3-a-sinking-ship
http://www.propublica.org/article/emeritus-4-close-the-back-door

    
     This is greed's horror story, real and pervasive. One thing is crystal clear; economically disadvantaged Americans, who cannot readily move from one facility to another are worse off than their prosperous counterparts. The same is true for those whose families are neither knowledgeable nor vigilant.    Many well-meaning family members believe they can fulfill or share among them, the role of caregiver, regardless of what the role will entail. It is a daunting business, and soon becomes extremely burdensome. From experience and observation, there is a third category, families who, simply, place their elderly into the hands of others, relieved to be shut of the problem. These folks just walk away, visiting rarely, if at all.
     For millions of elderly each year, "Assisted Living" becomes assisted dying. Abused, neglected, despondent, over- and wrongly medicated people fade, wither and die. Although it was first published in 2008, here is a condensed version of what consumers need to know about Assisted Living:
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/10-things-to-know-about-assisted-living/?_r=0
        My desire is to write an informative blog one that stressed stress the importance of issues of aging and elder law for everyone. It isn't simply that we're all going to be older some day; it is that we all have older people in our lives, people we love, whose concerns are our concerns.
       In another post we'll talk about about a plan of action for elders already in assisted living facilities, their intimate friends/family. To begin, here is a state-by-state mandatory reporting link from The American Bar Association:
http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/aging/docs/MandatoryReportingProvisionsChart.authcheckdam.pdf