“It was like being in jail,” Mr. Brown said on a recent afternoon. “In the nursing home you’ve got to do what they say when they say it, go to bed when they tell you, eat what they want you to eat. The food was terrible.”
But recently state workers helped Mr. Brown find a two-bedroom apartment in public housing here, which he shares with his daughter. “It just makes me more relaxed, more confident in myself,” he said, speaking with some difficulty, but with a broad smile. “More confident in the future.”
A growing number of states are reaching out to people like Mr. Brown, who have been in nursing homes for more than six months, aiming to disprove the notion that once people have settled into a nursing home, they will be there forever. Since 2007, Medicaid has teamed up with 29 states to finance such programs, enabling the low-income elderly and people with disabilities to receive many services in their own homes. “Medicaid has had an institutional bias in favor of nursing homes,” even for people who do not need them, said Gene Coffey, a staff lawyer at the nonprofit National Senior Citizens Law Center. “Federal law requires states to provide nursing home services. They don’t have to provide home or community-based services.”
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Elderly Leave Nursing Homes for a Home
Nursing homes don't nurse and they're not home.
ReplyDeleteIt's also better for the taxpayers because people living in nursing facilities are subject to more germs and therefore more illnesses resulting in more Medicaid dollars spent.
ReplyDeleteI am happy for Mr. Brown!
ReplyDeleteI hope this trend continues across the country!
ReplyDeleteAnd Mr. Brown gets to live with his daughter -- that's great!
ReplyDeleteNo one wants to be in a nursing home, so it only makes sense to find other alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI am happy for Mr. Brown! Praise God!
This is good news.
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, yes....I agree: “It was like being in jail,” Mr. Brown said on a recent afternoon. “In the nursing home you’ve got to do what they say when they say it, go to bed when they tell you, eat what they want you to eat. The food was terrible.”
Nursing facilities are not home sweet home with no room to call your own.
I think the taxpayers should have a voice in this as we are paying the bills and I say let them go home.
I vote for having as many people in their own residences with assistance if needed. We better wake up and think outside the box because a tidal wave of aging boomers will be facing this situation on top of the generation before them.
State workers helped someone? That's a new one.
ReplyDelete