“My Dad Was Diagnosed With Dementia. Medicare’s 7-Word Response Baffled Me”

 

“My Dad Was Diagnosed With Dementia. Medicare’s 7-Word Response Baffled Me,” by Kate Ferranti, HuffPost

“‘If your parents were poor, I would say don’t worry about this. And if your parents had 2 to 3 million in their IRA accounts, I would say don’t worry about this. But your parents are middle-class, and in this case, that’s a problem.’ An elder care lawyer said this to me when my father was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. … ‘We don’t consider dementia a medical issue,’ a Medicare rep told me, to my great disbelief. But my dad’s brain — which can no longer translate commands to his muscles — is not working properly, which certainly seems like a medical issue. He cannot take a shower, use the bathroom, take his pills, get dressed or walk unaided. He cannot be left alone. He cannot put together logical sentences. … Still, I cannot simply sit in this grief and just be present with him in whatever time we have left because there is always more research to do, more Medicaid planning to try to understand, more numbers to crunch, more lawyers to call, more anxiety to manage, more hoops to jump through while navigating a disjointed health care system.”

LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:

What the government has done to ruin long-term care for generations of families is a tragedy. To make sense of what ails LTC, read the Paragon Health Institute’s “Long-Term Care: The Problem” and “Long-Term Care: The Solution” and watch this “virtual LTC event” featuring age wave visionary Ken Dychtwald and leading LTC researchers.