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Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

oregonlive.com

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Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#201

Post by wombatpm »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #95
john_yaya wrote: post #15

Senior homes and assisted living centers are a national disgrace. They are entirely about profit maximization (what business isn’t?), and as such hire people at the exact minimum and have well over 100% yearly turnover. The staff commonly steal from residents, and the management do not care. They’d rather retain a larcenous pig who barely executes her duties than have to go back and scrape the barrel for a replacemen…

> And it’s time to stop spending $500K on medical care just so an 88 year old can make it to 89. Does U.S. Medicare not use QALYs? (Quality Adjusted Life-Years) The WHO recommends using 3x GDP/capita for each QALY, which would set America's threshold somewhere around $150k, not the $500k in your example.

My mother-in-law had kidney failure. The statements showed the cost as 70k per month. Obviously Medicare paid a lower amount, but she had 4 years of dialysis before death. And that’s not counting her hospitalizations for falls and UTIs. I can easily believe 500k

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#202

Post by pmorici »

roenxi wrote: post #160
pmorici wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Elderly people should live with their families." Spoken with the confidence of someone who has never had to care for an elderly relative who was in both mental and physical decline. In any case it is a deeply personal decision without a definitive right or wrong answer. After seeing my Aunt try to care for my grandmother for years only for it to negatively effect their relationship because of her dementia I wouldn't…

Without disagreeing - if that is what happened to her relationship with someone close to her, what would have happened in a care facility of people who don't have any personal connection at all? These care facilities don't sound like fun either. Fact is that getting old can be a truly horrible process. Which is why the pro-euthanasia people keep standing up.

After she was too much for my aunt even with a part time home healthcare worker she did move to a care facility where she has lived for the past ~7 years. The two she has lived at are decent from what I can tell and close enough to family that someone visits her on a pretty much daily basis. Both ways can work.

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#203

Post by gruez »

germinalphrase wrote: post #125
gruez wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s quite disgusting as she is a mother with a disabled child. how is that disgusting? that seems entirely consistent with her beliefs, as disabled child means high costs which potentially could mean getting denied care on the basis of cost. it's not any different than say, "congresswoman with cancer pushes for cancer treatment funding bill".

Because the core issue was about helping people put their own end of life wishes in writing and establish a will? It was never about a panel choosing care on behalf of someone else.

It was? From the wikipedia article

>[...] proposed legislation would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would carry out triage, i.e. decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents, or children with Down syndrome—were "worthy of medical care"

I'm not sure how you got estate planning and/or medical euthanasia from that.

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#204

Post by mtnGoat »

BrianB wrote: post #135
mtnGoat wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only time this really happens is wildland fires, which are historically understaffed and underfunded anyways.

9/11 took every firefighter

9/11 is an extreme edge case, I would say.

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#205

Post by xyzzyz »

nradov wrote: post #153
xyzzyz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending and educational outcomes are very loosely correlated in the US. Vermont is spending roughly as much as Mississippi, but it has vastly better educational outcomes. Baltimore spends more per student than the two combined, but its educational outcomes are abysmal.

Much of what Baltimore spends on "education" is really social services by another name. That's not necessarily a bad thing because children in bad situations really do need food, healthcare, counseling, etc in order to be able to learn effectively. But bundling all of those ancillary services into the education budget makes it hard to tell whether taxpayers are getting their money's worth.

Apparently, the food, healthcare, and counseling, as administered by Baltimore schools, are not very helpful in education, given the abysmal outcomes they produce.

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#206

Post by MisterBastahrd »

ipaddr wrote: post #73
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it isn't obvious, because it isn't true. When I was living in an apartment complex, I had a neighbor with a magnesium imbalance, and she had an "emergency" about once every 10 days. Her elderly husband was unable to move her to get her the infusions she needed, so he would call the paramedics, who promptly got her out of the apartment every time. The fire department also brought a truck every time, which block…

In some cities you call 911 give an address and police, fire and paramedics will arrive while they are figuring out what the emergecy is.

For most, 911 is the number you call when you have any sort of medical issue that requires ambulatory transport. For people with chronic medical conditions, there's no "figuring out."

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#207

Post by stickfigure »

GaryTang wrote: post #147
dls2016 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be my guest, go to a small town fire hall and see how “well off” the volunteers are compared to the median HN poster.

I have been. Not one of them are forced to be firefighters. They volunteer

...and FYI, those volunteers get to pick and choose which calls they respond to. Not sure what axe you're grinding, but I'm glad you don't live in my district.

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#208

Post by germinalphrase »

gruez wrote: post #203
germinalphrase wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the core issue was about helping people put their own end of life wishes in writing and establish a will? It was never about a panel choosing care on behalf of someone else.

It was? From the wikipedia article >[...] proposed legislation would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would carry out triage, i.e. decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents, or children with Down syndrome—were "worthy of medical care" I'm not sure how you got estate planning and/or medical euthanasia from that.

I’m not saying anything about medical euthanasia, but - to your question - the Wikipedia article is inaccurate:

“Governor Palin’s Facebook post was about a proposal in the ACA that would allow Medicare to pay for patients to discuss living wills and other end of life issues with their doctor. Her statements helped create a huge political and public outcry that resulted in the language being removed from the final legislation and proves the impact and relevance of her statement. “In 2011, the Obama administration even deleted all references to end-of-life planning in a new Medicare regulation when opponents interpreted the move as a back-door effort to allow such planning.”

The IPAB was even specifically limited from making recommendations around healthcare rationing:

“ The ACA also places limits on the authority of the IPAB. The ACA states, “[t]he IPAB may not recommend rationing of healthcare, raising Medicare beneficiary premiums, cost sharing, or modifying eligibility criteria.”42 This is totally contrary to the “death panels” claim made by Governor Palin and illustrates the concern and confusion over the IPAB’s statutory and regulatory role. Also, Medicare specifically “withholds the power to regulate the practice of medicine from the federal government.” The IPAB has significant limitations on the scope of its proposals. So, as per ACA law, the IPAB cannot submit any proposals that would “ration care, modify Medicare eligibility criteria, raise costs to beneficiaries, change cost sharing for covered services, or restrict benefits in any way.”

Source: https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&htt...

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#209

Post by Aloha »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #186
Aloha wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take care of my mother then, I didn't sign up for that burden.

This is a poor criterion for responsibility. If you don't sign up to obey the law should you be immune from prosection for murder or robbery (supposing you were to commit those crimes)? Some responsibilities are innate.

As far as I'm concerned my mother forfeited her right to lifetime care for me based on how my childhood went.

I had a difficult childhood, while its a long story, I was my mothers emotional support network, and effectively parent/spouse, from about 8 on, however when I was inconvenient for her, she pushed me out of the way. I never got to be a normal kid. The start of the break for me was when I first tried moving out at 22, it didn't go well, I asked to move home, she said no. I spent a week in my car. Eventually she relented, but I learned an important lesson, that I needed to be able to rely on myself - largely alone, that my family wouldn't be there for me if I really needed it.

I am more than happy to provide some additional financial support, however my mother has a generous pension and social security, and makes more than enough money to support herself. It's the emotional burdens where I draw the line - as a only child who already shouldered more than my fair share of emotional burdens, I'm not willing to put my life on hold again for an unknown period of time to care for my ailing mother, who by any measure is miserable to be around - or rather, specifically, goes out of her way to make me miserable.

It'd probably be different if I was not an only child, and this was a burden that could be shared among siblings, but its not, it's just me.

Re: Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

#210

Post by edmundsauto »

xyzzyz wrote: post #205
nradov wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of what Baltimore spends on "education" is really social services by another name. That's not necessarily a bad thing because children in bad situations really do need food, healthcare, counseling, etc in order to be able to learn effectively. But bundling all of those ancillary services into the education budget makes it hard to tell whether taxpayers are getting their money's worth.

Apparently, the food, healthcare, and counseling, as administered by Baltimore schools, are not very helpful in education, given the abysmal outcomes they produce.

Those outcomes are not reasonable goals, given the profound challenges these students face. The programs are probably inefficient (many of these services are), but your statement forgets that the bar is too high for kids suffering from abuse, starvation, homelessness, etc.

It could be a lot worse without this support.

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