The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit • Hacker News Board

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#81

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

leoqa wrote: post #68

notmyjob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.

You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.

That’s sorta the point, and the problem. There’s a dependency ratio problem brewing: there are simply not enough working-age people to care for the old people who will need care. No amount of financial instruments can paper over this reality - they will just go bankrupt (eg insurance policies, social security) or steadily drop in value relative to the cost of care (401ks and other financial instruments) until the price of LTC equilibrates to actual capacity. Anyone not in the percentile that actually has eldercare capacity will simply have to go without, much like the price of housing has risen to shut out Millennials that are not in the income percentile needed to get one of the few scarce houses for sale.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#82

Post by fludlow » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:29 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #70

Sloppy editing? Residents face service charges averaging £524 a month, on top of ground rents that can exceed £500 a year. £500 a year would be implausibly low. I suspect a few missing nils or a thousands indicator.

Ground rent is a bizarre UK property law concept. The resident will have paid for the leasehold of the property (typically a one off payment for 99 years occupancy which is transferable if they want to sell to someone else) but the company retains the freehold and can charge ground rent in return for absolutely nothing (this is different to a service charge which would fund things like communal space/facilities upkeep). This arrangement sort of makes a tiny bit of sense for apartments if you're being generous about it but there was a scandal in the UK that lots of regular houses were being sold leasehold not freehold with ground rent that started at a token level but ramped up significantly above inflation

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#83

Post by spwa4 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:29 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #81

leoqa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.

That’s sorta the point, and the problem. There’s a dependency ratio problem brewing: there are simply not enough working-age people to care for the old people who will need care. No amount of financial instruments can paper over this reality - they will just go bankrupt (eg insurance policies, social security) or steadily drop in value relative to the cost of care (401ks and other financial instruments) until the pri…

No worries, the EU (and UK) governments have gone ahead and taken the only real way out of this conundrum: researching robotic labor to take over for this ... and defunded it.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#84

Post by lo_zamoyski » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

joules77 wrote: post #55

leoqa wrote: post #43

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances. I run a weekly route with…

Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement.…

That depends. Retirement as passage into idleness? Sure. Many people who retire piss away the remainder of their lives because they don't know what to do with themselves. They get depressed, and they become lonely, because they become isolated. Children move away, spouses die, friends move away or die. Couple this with suburban planning where you can't do anything without a car (something the elderly are less likely to be able to operate) and where there is no town center, certainly not one congenial to the social life of the neighborhood or town. With the decline in church membership, you don't have that option anymore, one that also dealt with questions dealing with the end of life (if you view death as the absolute end, then your life was hopeless to begin with; retirement and old age simply strip distractions and illusions effectively).

But this is separate from the question of retirement as such, or the question of aging. Your grandfather, I presume, only refused to take medication and medical treatment, which falls under "extraordinary care", and this is morally licit. Had he refused food or offed himself intentionally (or with "assistance"), that would have been a different matter.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#85

Post by Retric » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

spwa4 wrote: post #83

nostrademons wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s sorta the point, and the problem. There’s a dependency ratio problem brewing: there are simply not enough working-age people to care for the old people who will need care. No amount of financial instruments can paper over this reality - they will just go bankrupt (eg insurance policies, social security) or steadily drop in value relative to the cost of care (401ks and other financial instruments) until the pri…

No worries, the EU (and UK) governments have gone ahead and taken the only real way out of this conundrum: researching robotic labor to take over for this ... and defunded it.

That’s not the only solution, curing dementia would largely solve the manpower issues here.

Rapid population decline is a separate issue that makes this problem seem much worse. In other words, if elderly care works in a steady state population then it’s a symptom here not a cause.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#86

Post by rkomorn » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

nemomarx wrote: post #67

rkomorn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a very real factor that we now consume from dozens if not hundreds of sources per month. The overhead, as a consumer, of managing any of this as actual subscriptions, transactions, or membership to some (likely multiple) sort of ecosystem would be substantial, even beyond just the money aspect.

It opens up room for bundling maybe? People want to pay one subscription for everything whenever possible, like Netflix originally vs now. If you could pay 10 a month for a major newspaper + YouTube + some other tech sites that could be pretty attractive. (or whatever combinations - news and sports, porn and tech, IDK)

Maybe. I don't know how fantastic Apple's combined subscriptions are doing. Their news one is already priced higher than that (but I guess you get a lot of news sources).

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#87

Post by n4r9 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #35

John23832 wrote: post #10

Under capitialism, why would anyone think that this is anything but expected. These living communities are meant to house you, until you die, for a price. You have saved up money to pay for that service until you die. Why would they leave money on the table? Why would they spend any extra on someone who's "going to die anyway". Someone who is barely ambulatory; who has few outside connections. It's the horrible resul…

Capitalism is a system. When you burn your food that is not end stage cooking, but a failure to manage cooking as a system. When your worn tires blow out while speeding causing you to fly off the road that is not end stage vehicular mobility, but irresponsible driving. The last time Capitalism went unchecked and tried to eat itself was the Great Depression. That was ended by controlling Capitalism with strong regulat…

Perhaps they're saying that the system inevitably evolves into a subset of the state space regardless of controls.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#88

Post by lstodd » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

cpncrunch wrote: post #74

dash2 wrote: post #56

I read the article and didn't actually see any evidence that this is not a reasonably fair and functional system. I did read: * People complaining that the cafe wasn't as good as they liked. * The fact that old people have signed up for a retirement village. * The fact that some of them get confused and need help. What's the evidence base here?

Exactly. I just tried fact checking the "milking" bit. Looking up lists of care home groups, Allegra Care came up first. Looking at their financial statements (all public, and include full details of profit and loss, thanks to UK company law), their profit in 2024 was 30k, and in 2023 they had a 300k loss. So not exactly milking! I think running a care home isn't a great way to make a huge profit.

If your company shows profit in official reports you must fire your CFO.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#89

Post by dh2022 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

joules77 wrote: post #55

leoqa wrote: post #43

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances. I run a weekly route with…

Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement.…

Are you volunteering yourself and your kids to not taking medication and seeing doctors in your old age? Or are you volunteering "other people"?

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#90

Post by dkarl » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

The only thing really disturbing thing I read in the piece is this:

> a yell cuts through the noise; an older lady has fallen by the serving hatch and is unable to stand unassisted. “Would you give me a hand, sweetheart?”, she calmly asks, “Don’t touch her!” the bar manager snaps as I bend towards her. “You’re not allowed to touch her!” The woman blinks up at me, confused. “We have to call the care team — otherwise she could sue.” And so, for the next 45 minutes, she lies there

That's nothing to do with profit. Nonprofit and government-run facilities are just as strict about following legally dictated rules to illogical and counterproductive results as for-profit facilities are.

I'm actually impressed that the author found so little to complain about.

On the supposed topic of profiteering, the article is frustratingly light on analysis. It's presented like it's going to be an exposé, but then he gets distracted by his own discovery of the horrors of aging:

> it’s hard to feel sentimental when I recall my own experiences: shepherding confused residents to the toilet; placing cones beside rogue deposits in the restaurant; mopping up suspicious puddles (custard, John Smiths, or other); nudging care teams about overstuffed stoma bags; and politely reminding people of where exactly they live

> It strikes me that no matter the service charge, or the quality of the restaurant — which John chides as “more like a backstreet cafe” — or whether privately owned or council-housed, you may still end up defecating onto your shoe in the middle of a bistro. No amount of ground rent can protect your dignity when there is an intrinsic lack of it in ageing

> “How’s Harry?” I ask. “Dead.” “Helen?” “Dead.” “Lucy?” “In care.” “Pirate Paul?” (he wore an eye-patch and a cap with an anchor on it.) “Dead, I found him.” “Mary One?” “Alive.” “Mary Two?” “Nope.” “Bombay Jan?” “In the bar.” “Little John?” “Had a fall”.

It might have been a better article if he had spared us his personal feelings about aging -- his most interested readers have nothing to learn from him on that topic -- and dedicated those inches to the economics. All he manages to tell us is that people are paying quite a bit, which means nothing in isolation. Are there examples of how it can be done for less?

It also glosses over some details that seem important for analyzing cost and comparing to alternatives, like what level of assistance is provided, though I'm American and this is perhaps not an issue for British readers. (The existence of "care teams" that attend to falls and stoma bags shows that "independent living" means something different in this context than in an American one.)

Speaking as someone with an aging parent who will likely need some kind of daily assistance in the 5-10 years if not sooner, the picture painted by the article doesn't sound like a bad way for my mom to spend her remaining years. I'm not seeing the "sordid reality" the headline promises.