NYT Article on People Leaving Nursing Homes

A great deal of the reading we're doing in the Social Policy class talks about how the present structure of public policy tends to force elders into institutions and poverty (if they weren't already impoverished to begin with). Recently, some states have been working on ways to redistribute Medicaid money so that more people can stay at home rather than nursing homes.

This article from the New York Times (linked here in the mobile version, which has less banner ads, etc), does a pretty decent job of going over some of the high-level pros and cons of these "Money Follows the Person" programs.

Some main points:

• PRO: people are thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to escape having their final days in a nursing home
• PRO: it looks like people moving out of nursing homes costs less money
• CON: the "less money" part is most likely due to family members doing labor that is paid for in nursing homes. The article implies that this is a problem, or at least potential hardship for family members, but doesn't delineate that most of the burden of care falls on... you guessed it... women.
  

The article is very good also because it touches on how devastating things can be in older age - a slip and fall can rapidly lead to being shuttled into a nursing home and never getting to go home, much less wrap up your possessions. Life is so very fragile.

Finally, the article mentions:

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that home care costs taxpayers $44,000 a year less than a nursing home stay - though this number cannot be used to estimate total savings, because often home-based services replace family care, not nursing home care.

I'd bet that Carroll Estes is somehow related to that study!

(the article noted in this post is "Helping Elderly Leave Nursing Homes for a Home" by John Leland)