There’s No Place Like Home

Action to take

When you imagine living well into your hundreds,
imagine living at home or in a home like setting.

Why

Only a third of Americans say they want to live to a hundred.
Why? They imagine living to a hundred means being disabled
and living in a nursing home with its depersonalization, lack of privacy,
and institutional food. Nursing homes often are a necessary evil
for step-down nursing care after hospitalization, but they are a
terrible place to call home.

The marketplace caught on and now offers a cornucopia of
home-based services including housekeeping, nursing care,
and physical therapy. There are often tax breaks, utility subsidies,
and meals on wheels programs to help low-income seniors stay at home.
Independent living facilities and assisted living facilities are popping up
everywhere. Some are homelike. Some are very luxurious and like
a resort. (Some, unfortunately, look institutional and have a medical
feel with nursing stations and medical carts.) Americans whose
finances give them a choice are increasingly choosing to live at home
or in homelike communities. Baby Boomers in particular are likely
to insist on a homelike or resort-like atmosphere.

Now federal and state governments are doing the math and finding
that housing seniors in nursing homes often wastes money. In Pennsylvania,
for example, nursing homes bill Medicaid $144 a day per resident.
Home based care only costs $56 a day. Certainly a sizeable number
of nursing home residents are bedridden or in fragile health and are better
served in a nursing home. Many, however, are in nursing homes because they
have health problems, only have Social Security income, and can’t
afford to live on their own. They need some assistance but don’t
need the intensity of a nursing home.

Often indigent and low income seniors with health problems have
to choose between trying to make it in the community vs. giving up
their privacy and independence to share a tiny room in a nursing home.
It is probably just a matter of time before the government catches on
that the middle ground of assisted living is more humane, more
dignified, and more cost effective. Perhaps the fear is that people
who would otherwise live at home will flock to more comfortable
assisted living facilities. I doubt it. In most assisted living facilities
most residents pine for living at home.

To conclude, more and more seniors are living at home or in
homelike facilities. While you may spend a few weeks in a nursing
home for a knee replacement, you are not likely to have to live out
your later years in a nursing home.

Quotes

Oh, Auntie Em – there’s no place like home!
~Dorothy’s last line in the Wizard of Oz

Humor

Human beings are the only creatures
that allow their children to come back home.
~Bill Cosby

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Anti-Aging Psychologist Dr. Michael Brickey is keynote speaker and author of the Oprah-featured book, Defy Aging and 52 baby steps to Grow Young. The books and his Reverse Aging anti-aging hypnosis CDs comprise his anti-aging system. Listen to Dr. Brickey interview anti-aging experts on Ageless Lifesytles Radio on www.webtalkradio.net