CA elders, the carers deserve better than the funding barriers

When my father was little, he took off his own braces with pliers in the garage after his parents had run out of money to take him to the orthodontist. He answered the door for debt collectors, falsifying as if his parents were not home to avoid confrontations.

He knew economic uncertainty in his small bones.

No wonder, really, he became bankrupt when I grew up. More on the nose than any novelist could write him, “The journey of the hero” of my father was largely determined by his longing to create the safety he had never had as a child.

My father doesn’t remember any of it, keep in mind. He is about a decade in his journey with dementia and almost all his memories- short and long-term- have burned to ashes during the relentless fire of the disease. Nowadays, it is my elderly daughter and my brother and mom are the guardians of the plot twists, heroes and tension in the story that revives his life history.

Since my father was in the pursuit of never to be poor again, we are in a minority of family care that has access to the money we need to take care of him.

For a while it meant to take him to a Daily Adult Program with dementia and Alzheimer’s. It was an oasis in the otherwise prevailing life of the family. My mother, brother or I would let him go and enjoy a solid day of continuous work, household administration, or even just a necessary nap.

But last December, the Center closed itself because of the inexplicably high fees the state charges such programs annually and inconsistently the low percentage of Medicaid recovery it pays. The state gave the organization $ 76.27 a day for care that cost $ 250 to provide – a recovery rate that has not changed since 2009.

The closure sent us about 40 other families in a queue. There are so few affordable daytime programs Family Options in CaliforniaS In fact, in 32 counties Medi-Cal recipients do not have access to programs such as those, according to the California Association of Adult Services.

Instead, we relied on home health care about 20 hours a week and toured memory care establishments, some of which cost $ 15,000 a month from their pocket. The waiting lists are long. Understanding all this is exhausting, at the top of the daily work of the care for my father, cooking it at every meal, bathing it, making sure that he accepts the ever-changing combination of medicines at the right moments, aermentary agitation.

And we have the absolutely the best possible scenario: three involved family care and one professional, as well as the acuity of research and financial resources, to make sure that we can honor my father in the last months of his life.

The proposals that appeared in the first weeks of the Trump administration threaten to make this bad situation even more for families whose financial picture does not look like ours -the greater part of American families take care of the elder with dementia, which are completely dependent on Medicaid.

A probation will be Medicaid operation requirementswhich may sound innocent enough, but as justice explains in aging: “Although most people aimed at working requirements should remain eligible, only bureaucracy will take away the coverage of the people who already work, older ones who are retired Or have difficulty finding work, people with disabilities and family care. In addition, resources spent on the implementation of these bureaucratic obstacles will delay access to critical support for health, financial and food for all. “

Our elders and their care deserve a better history. My father’s ability to build wealth is born of his childhood trauma and is accelerated by his white, male privilege. None of this should be a prerequisite for a worthy end in this extremely rich country.