The obvious solution is to have Medicaid pay for in-home services that keep the elderly out of expensive nursing homes, but since our politicians see their job as protecting their corporate sponsors, we know that won’t happen.
But I just want to say that my siblings and I could not have managed without the (poorly paid) home health aides who took care of my mom in the last six months or so of her life. As far as I’m concerned, those workers are saints. The problem with the cost is that my mother would never have agreed to hire them if they weren’t so cheap. (As we know, the elderly become obsessed with their money running out.) If we’d been rich, we could have paid for them ourselves — but we’re not. So we benefited at their expense. Not a good feeling!
