Home Care Disconnect

Although I must confess to be one of those who are contributing to a steep decline in the percentage of the population watching a network nightly newscast, an NBC promo had me tuning in last night to see anchor Brian William's report on "Trading Places: When Kids Care for Aging Parents." http://dailynightly.msnbc.com/ William's piece was a moving account of his efforts to assure a dignified and quality life for his World War II veteran father, living by choice in a small one room efficiency in a New Jersey Assisted Living unit. Gordon Williams, now nearing 90 years of age, has survived not only his wife of 50 years and two of his children, but a "heart attack, cancer surgery, a broken hip and hip replacement."

Williams admits that he is fortunate to be able to financially care for his father - but physically - due to time and distance - he reports that he is dependent on some "angels" - namely the Visting Angels home care service. They do, he said, what he and so many others like him can not. And they do it quite well.

A few days before the NBC series began to air, the President proposed in his FY08 budget to freeze home care funding within the Medicare program, not only for the upcoming fiscal year, but for the next five years (FY08-FY12). The result would be a reduction over the five years of more than $9 billion nationally, and $302 million in Massachusetts. While many other services sustained cuts in the President's proposed budget, home health care's five year reduction is the most drastic.

Putting aside questions about budget sleight of hand that has the Executive Branch proposing cuts that will extend well past their tenure in office, the proposed cuts leave one wondering if indeed when it comes to care for aging relatives, we will soon be adding a "long term care divide" to our lexicon, along with "digital divide," "generation divide" and all of those other societal demarkations.

I am not saying that the government can or even should pick up the total tab for an aging population that is in large part an American success story: even those with chronic diseases can live longer and full lives due to great medical advances and great care.

But I am asking people to stop and think about Medicare and what it has meant for this country. Whether small government proponents like it or not, the fact is that Medicare remains the largest and I would argue probably the most succesful program our government has ever come up with. To allow benefits to be eroded as the President is proposing and at a time when they will be most needed seems at best short-sighted and at worse mean-spirited.

There is a small book I love called Really Important Stuff My Kids Have Taught Me." One of the sayings in it is the following: "If you want pancakes for breakfast, you got to help make help make them."

The message is if you have aging parents, you need to get off the sidelines and get into the long term care debate.