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Check out how to care for people with dementia in Belgium.


https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/what-makes-bruges-belgium-the-world-s-most-dementia-friendly-city-60338757721
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-21516365/pioneering-dementia-friendly-community-in-bruges
https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/news/bruges-dementia-friendly-city_en

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I'm amazed at the cost of AL/IL or NH, but, just consider, if a can makes, $10/hr × 3 shifts = $240 a day!!! That's just for ONE cna!! Add on all the other staff - kitchen workers, cleaning crew, RN, DON,..... The cost for 1 day is??? I don't know what the answer is, although I DO think, family members should be payed for taking care of their elderly. Who should pay for that ??? I don't know. God bless all you care givers working every day!
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Can’t compare a country with billions of people vs a small country like Denmark. Apples & oranges.

Okiegranny, your responses IMO are absolutely true.
Why would anyone put their faith in government implementing and controlling their healthcare? And worse, trust they would do it correctly? Why relinquish care of your husband or in-laws to the government? You see the battles now with providers opting out of Medicare & Medicaid.

“The government can’t run a two car funeral”. Funny and very true.

Competition is good. We need to open up insurance companies beyond state lines & develop more of an open market.

Rampant capitalism is the root of all evil? Where did that come from? Show me one country today that is not a capitalist country and is thriving.

Does anyone here ( US citizens) want to wait months or more for your elective knee or hip replacement ? That’s what will happen. Generic meds vs brand? Generic - no other choice.

Remember “if you like your doctor you’ll be able to keep your doctor”, spoken by the head of prior administration. Sure, that happened.

The current mass exodus into retirement of experienced providers continues. Internal/family medicine doctors make the least these days and are shutting down their practices due to endless paperwork to even get reimbursed and the minimal reimbursement they get.

Re: Paid Government Healthcare- how are we going to replace Primary Care Provider’s when specialist’s make 3x the money? New MD’s are not going into internal medicine/family medicine. Thus the number of PCP’s continue to diminish.

This is our quagmire in the US.

And our Congress isn’t working toward any solutions. They have become partisan hacks- both parties.

I will stick with capitalism.

Look at Venezuela! That experiment in socialism is finally tanking but is still hanging on life support.

Be careful what you wish for.
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Granny....

Oh no....the reason there is no healthcare in this country is because the government allowed it to change to For Profit.

prior to 1980s hospitals and clinics had to demonstrate service to the community...and be non profit. Then, the government (moving ever more to the right) allowed for profit. (Thank you Ronald Reagan)

and boy, it sure is!!! Pricing according to what the market will bare.
Investors leap in and the product must produce profit! Not actual care...profit to report at the stock holders meeting.
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OkieGranny May 2019
I'm not sure where you got that information, but it isn't accurate. As you can see from this history of nursing care, the public sector has been heavily involved in health care since the early 1900s. https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/nurses-institutions-caring/history-of-hospitals/

During WWII, the problem worsened when the government instituted wage and price controls so that companies could no longer give raises. Instead they opted to provide more benefits, such as health insurance, which was tax deductible at the time. That is when health insurance became tied to employment, which led, of course, to making it more difficult for the unemployed to obtain and afford health insurance.

Wherever you find government involved, you find increasing costs because there is no profit/loss motive for bureaucrats to control costs or to improve quality. Look at everything where government is the biggest provider (health care, education, student loans, welfare) and you will find costs approaching levels that are unaffordable and quality and access declining. Government can't manage a 2-car funeral, let alone health care.

BTW, British Columbia just announced it is forcing people to take what they call biosimilar medications as a substitute for what they are currently using. The other thing government takes away is choice.

https://mises.org/wire/how-government-regulations-made-healthcare-so-expensive
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More than 80 percent of Medicaid is spent on long term care. Our state just passed some b.s. legislation for home and community based resources. But won't expand Medicaid. Now, that said. I STRONGLY believe that families need to use up their own resources, the loved one's, to be clear, before you ask the state, US,to pay for care.

People have to come to terms with NO, you are not inheriting a dime.
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We can but we would need to waive a lot of the rules we have in place to protect both carers rights and patient rights. We have in the past and continue now to paint ourselves into a corner in our quest to keep everyone 100% safe 100% of the time. A dementia city such as the one in Belgium will only work here if we protect them from lawsuits. We could do it, but, we have some major changes to the way we view "rights and protections" before it will happen. Allowing a dementia patient to live alone in their home and just be checked on now and then, to wander the streets freely, to shop etc all on their own with local residents trained to help as they notice help is needed is a wonderful plan. However things are bound to 'go wrong' now and then and when something goes wrong in the US a huge lawsuit is bound to follow. Hearing about the lawsuits frightens people away from trying to help in the future which then means there is less help available and so the cycle goes. If we can control our need to control then Yes, we can do it here.
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I saw that on the news last night. It was beautiful. Even DH wanted to know why we can’t do it here. But I think there still is quite a stigma here about dementia which they seem to have overcome along with perhaps a bigger reverence for elders in general. Don’t know but it was a beautiful approach.
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We can’t do it here, because one wage earner is not enough to support a family of four. Everyone needs to be employed to make it work....so there are no hands to be part of the caregivers village.

most of the caregivers here who have given up their jobs for this have put themselves into situations where their own senior years are now at risk.

Rampant capitalism is the root of all evil.
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OkieGranny May 2019
Rampant government is the root of all evil. There has not been a free market in health insurance or health care in many decades. Government has been the major player in health insurance and care ever since the founding of Medicare and Medicaid, if not before that. Everything government touches declines in quality and increases in costs. The birth rate is declining rapidly in all industrialized nations because the taxes required to support a welfare state make children an expensive luxury for most people. The increasing size and expense of big government is also why it is so difficult for people to support a family on one income.

Great Britain is fast running our of money to support its national health care system, which continues to decline in quality and access. These socialized systems also practice euthanasia on the elderly in increasing numbers.

The few areas of health care in the US that are doing well are the ones where patients are the customers, not insurance companies or the government, and providers must please patients rather than bureaucracies. Those are the only areas of health care where anything resembling capitalism is in practice, and they are the areas where costs have declined and access, innovation, quality, and patient satisfaction have increased.

What Socialized Medicine Looks Like
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2019/03/05/what-socialized-medicine-looks-like/#28ef2d0e625b
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