Health, Politics

A Good Way to Help the Elderly

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Congress should act quickly to correct a glaring injustice in the Medicare and Medicaid programs where bureaucratic process has frustrated purpose.

Unless things have changed greatly in recent weeks, the intent of Medicare and Medicaid is to provide high-quality health care to the needy and the elderly at the least possible cost to the taxpayers.

However, current Medicare and Medicaid rules which require patients to be institutionalized before they can receive payments are promoting poor care at high cost.

Item: Because the system encourages elderly to get into hospitals or nursing homes to have their care paid for, it promotes paying hospital and nursing home rates for many situations which could be handled on an outpatient basis or through home care.

Item: Institutions strip the elderly of free agency. They lose their right to make any decisions for themselves. They also lose the therapeutic value of familiar surroundings and the closeness of family.

Item: The cost of caring for many eligible Medicare and Medicaid patients at home is less, and the care is far better.

Dr. Phillip Brickner, founder of a program to treat the elderly at home, says, “I don’t think it is our prerogative as health workers to insist that we know better than our older friends or relatives what is better for them.

“Our patients often recognize the risk to themselves of moving away from all the familiar clues of their own apartment or home. Often, in fact, they would rather die in their own homes than live some sort of life in an institution.”

Item: Brickner’s plan costs 60 percent of what it would cost to treat patients in hospitals or nursing homes. A Georgia study showed that some health care required an average of only $170 a month, and institutional care for the same patients averaged more than $1,000 a month.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch is sponsoring a bill to abolish the institutionalization rules, promote the development of home care – especially in rural areas and provide tax credits to families who care for elderly relatives in their homes.

The government shouldn’t deny hospital care to eligible people who want it but neither should it force it on those who could get better care at less cost outside institutions.