Let’s Hear From Front Lines On The Elderly-Care Issue

If you or someone you know lives in a nursing home, chances are good that you could tell maddening tales about senselessness in the reimbursement programs that fund long-term care for the aged.

If you are part of the care-delivery system, you may fume daily over red tape that forces families and care providers into choices that are both more costly and less effective than other options that regulations disallow.

This is an invitation to tell those stories.

Congress has produced a plan to let states require the children of the elderly to help pay for nursing home care rather than paying for that care out of dwindling federal Medicaid funds.

The notion presents baby boomers with an ethical dilemma: how to balance a moral obligation to help care for their parents with that to provide their own children with an education which will prepare them for the uncertain future which awaits their generation.

And (let’s be honest) some boomers will question why they should have to forgo their plans and the lifestyle they’ve worked for just because the government abruptly is changing policy directions.

How to pay the bill for nursing home costs and other health care expenses associated with aging is a tormenting political challenge. At some point in the debate, a voice will insist that existing resources be used more efficiently. Easier said than done, other voices will chide.

The chiders are correct, of course, especially if the conversation is confined to the political arena where traditional decision-makers and policy-setters operate.

At the other end of the pipeline, though, are the people who deliver and receive the services those decisions and those policies provide. And those people, the ones addressed in the opening paragraphs above, the ones on the front lines, are better situated than others to identify the weak spots in the current system.

So, what are the better ways? How can the system be improved to make nursing home care less costly to begin with or, better, to enable senior citizens to stay in their own homes?

If you have improvements to suggest, call, write or send a fax or e-mail to “Bagpipes” at any of the addresses or numbers listed below.

, DataTimes MEMO: “Bagpipes” appears Tuesdays and Thursdays. To respond, call Cityline at 458-8800, category 9881, from a Touch-Tone phone or send a fax to 459-5098 or e-mail to dougf@spokesman.com. You also can leave Doug Floyd a message at 459-5577, extension 5466.