For Old People, A New Kind of Neglect
For Old People, A New Kind of Neglect It's just an indignity that we have to go through this. Why should we have to call and plead and beg like this just to get my father in a nursing home?" says...
...He always paid his own way...
...The doctors and nurses, bowing to Medicare cost-cutting pressures, will transfer him out...
...Poorer states pay 40 per cent of the cost and receive a 60 per cent match...
...Most nights I don't sleep, not knowing what's going to happen, what we're going to do, how we're going to get care for my father...
...They straighten his short-sleeved gown, retie the laces at his back, and tuck a white bed sheet around his waist and groin...
...There is less and less institutional space these days for the sick and the old who can no longer pay...
...Every day the nurses take him out of bed and prop him up in the hospital version of a chaise longue...
...But he won't be, unless he is remarkably lucky...
...All along the legs, arms, and chest, between skin and bone, flesh has been taken away by age and illness...
...He can hear and understand, but he can't speak...
...To get the demanding, time-consuming long-term care he needs, Clifford Foster should be sent to a nursing home...
...In an effort to rebuild some strength, doctors have ordered a clear plastic feeding tube taped to the inside of one nostril and connected to a bottle of liquid nutrient hung from the arm of an aluminum pole...
...says Ann Schuyler, removing her glasses for a moment, rubbing eyes surrounded by deep circles...
...Since the mid-1960s, when Medicare and Medicaid programs were set up, Federal and state governments have shared responsibility for caring for the elderly...
...And now they're old and sick and they need help, and they're being treated like this...
...He communicates by moving his unparalyzed leg and arm up and down in a quick, repetitive motion against the arm and footrest of his chair...
...When his bedsores have healed and he has received some physical therapy, the hospital will have done all it can...
...Through Medicare reimbursement, the Federal Government pays for hospitalization...
...Investigators found ramshackle old buildings that turned into firetraps, badly trained nurses who over-medicated patients into semi-consciousness, and shockingly unsanitary living conditions in which old people were treated much like cattle...
...During the past fifteen years, the Medicaid laws have created a vast nursing home industry which, especially in the early 1970s, was the subject of many media exposes, most of them concerned with the quality of care...
...His body looks remarkably frail...
...Now he can no longer feed or dress himself, turn over in bed, or control his bladder and bowels...
...Responsibility for planning, administering, and regulating Medicaid programs is left to the states...
...My father worked hard all his life...
...Through Medicaid reimbursement, the Federal Government and the state governments together pay for long-term care...
...In response, government adopted and enforced more Susan Brait is a free-lance writer whose work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, and New Jersey Monthly...
...As sick as he is, Clifford Foster will be ready to leave the hospital any day now...
...Wealthier states pay a fifty-fifty split...
...My parents always managed on their own...
...Six weeks ago, Ann Schuyler's father, eighty-four-year-old Clifford Foster,, suffered a severe stroke...
...He has recovered from pneumonia, and his condition is stable...
Vol. 45 • November 1981 • No. 11
