With Alzheimer's, Health-Care Costs Could Triple

I took care of first my father with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, overlapped with my mother's care with Alzheimer's for 10 years, over 9 full time and then some. I had experience with doctors who never talked to each other and thus did inappropriate, conflicting things, knew nothing about geriatric patients special requirements and organizations that supposedly help but really had no clue. Supposedly quality nursing homes that were rife with abuse and incompetence and no control over their employees. Hospitals like a circus full of clowns. If you do not watch out when a family member cannot look out for themselves, or care for them yourself, they will be harmed or even killed by incompetent paid caregiving. The cost has been that I have gone from looking 10 years younger than my calendar age, according to people who knew me, to 10 years or more older, including my health, than my calendar age. People at the last thought I must be my mother's husband instead of son. We had to take out a reverse mortgage when their money ran out, despite my working part time at home when possible. My mother died shortly thereafter. Now with the economy gone to pot, I cannot sell commercial realty they owned to keep the house as there is no market. If I were an illegal alien, or got a mortgage without being qualified under Acorn's pushy advocacy, I could get help from the present bailouts. There is nothing I can find however for my situation. So I have found the cost of care for dementia to be every bit as high as anyone says. I see no alternative to doing what I have done however. The alternative would be to know that I let my parents be killed off early by a basically incompetent health care system where no one talks to each other so the right and left hand never know what the other is doing, half of what is said never happens and obvious waste is rife. Someone better get their act together before this problem, among so many other problems of incompetence run amok and government for sale to the highest bidder, takes the whole country down. But they will pay a lot for computerized medical records that do not address the real problems that exist as I described above. You need a system that forces all health care participants in a patients care to be aware of what everyone else is doing, why and how their part fits into the total plan of care, or doesn't fit, so they can do better. I see this as the missing part of health care that would allow a real improvement in care and reduction in costs.

Ted Vollers of FL 7:56AM March 25, 2009