30% of Elderly Would Rather Die than Go to Nursing Home, Euthanasia in the Netherlands, and Solving the Rubik’s Cube
30% of the elderly would rather die than enter a nursing home. An additional 26% indicate they are very unwilling to move to an institutional setting. (HT to Jason Shafrin.)
Every position of a Rubik’s Cube can be solved in 20 moves or less. (HT to Marginal Revolution.)
Euthanasia seems to be picking up steam among the Dutch.
I can appreciate the sentiment among the people who answered the poll about nursing homes, but I’m not sure I believe the results.
It’s a little puzzling why seniors are so resistant to nursing homes? They socialize much more, have fewer responsibilities and can engage in organized activities with peers.
I suspect the people who were polled that prefered death had not yet entered a nursing home.
I think I agree with Vicki on the poll of the elderly. I’m not sure I believe the results.
Maybe it depends on what kind of nursing home. High level assisted living centers can’t be compared to Medicaid dumping grounds.
With respect to nursing homes: Talk is cheap. In general, there is not a market where seniors can use prices to signal how much medical care they want, and when they want to say “it’s enough”.
Medicare is about to do this by government diktat (see: Berwick, Donald, MD), and long-term care is totally malformed by Medicaid. It’ll get a lot worse under the CLASS Act, if that is not repealed.
Imagine if health insurers could offer a contract that stated that once a person turned a certain age, and certain functions failed, they would not accept any further medical care. Today, insurers are not able to offer lower premiums for such commitments.
Only doctors and patients and their families are involved, but they don’t pay the bills. If insurers were involved, decisions would be clearer and more optimal.
John sez: “Imagine if health insurers could offer a contract that stated that once a person turned a certain age, and certain functions failed, they would not accept any further medical care”
I don’t have to imagine that, the insurance companies already do that, it’s called recission. You get cancer, they decide you had acne 45 years before and didn’t tell them, they drop your coverage for “fraud”.
artk–as I am sure you know, individual policies specifically limit rescission. For example, when one signs an individual insusrance contract, the policy may say that the insurer has the right to cancel the policy for material misrepresentations for a period of two years. After that, it cannot cancel unless there is serious fraud or premiums are not paid. And, as you know, all rescission decisions can be appealed to state regulators.
Rescission matters little in this case because most of the people in nursing homes are covered by Medicare. Medicare does not pay for skilled nursing beyond a short period. So, unless people have critical illness policies, sufficient income to cover nursing home charges, or long-term care insurance, their nursing home bills are paid by Medicaid. Medicaid does not cancel its coverage. Instead, a state may simply decide to cut provider reimbursement to control its expenditures. States often have no idea how that affects care because they don’t measure it.
If you are in doubt on where to find a good elderly care center you can find many resources available to seek information and counsel. Private duty organizations, home health agencies, and hospices are all viable places to start if you want to help your parent stay at home.