Quote from: TDoS on Mar 10, 2024, 04:11 PMMoms care costs $7500/month, I think the bill for the year I just sent to the accountant for tax considerations was like $88k for the year.
$7500 is mid-upper range for AC living, which generally house Private Pay clients and will only take a minimum required number of Medicaid patients. Medicaid reimbursement rates vary from state to state, but are generally around $4000. After that, the AC living place takes the residents Social Security and Pension checks, leaving the resident just $100/mo expense money. Avg SS check is around $1700, and here in AK many get much less than that, natives who held few jobs at low pay and did subsistence living,women who were housewives and live on survivor benefits, etc. They often get only $500-1000. The cheapest places run about $5500. They are all Medicaid. On some patiets with low SS, they get less than $5500. People who have big checks, they make more. Even if you get the max SS of $3500 or so, you still only get to keep $100 of it. You must have assets of less than $2000 total in stocks, bonds, real estate, cars etc. All that has to be spent down before Medicaid will kick in. These places are the worst ones.
Private Pay AC is better. For rich people who can afford to pay $88K/yr to keep mom or dad in one of these places or they have insurance that will cover it, life in a warehouse for the old, crippled and dying is better. It's like the difference between a Federal Penitentiary for White collar criminals and Rikers Island in NYC. Prison life is much more comfy and less dangerous.
The experience of walking in to one of these places is nothing like it is for a person who still has all his marbles living 24/7 with brain dead zombies walking around, periodically falling and breaking things, getting agitated daily and yelling profanity at staff and other patients, and priodically getting hold of pens, eating utensils, scissors or aything else they find they can brandish as a weapon. Everything not nailed down will be picked up and dropped somewhere else you can't find it. Cell phones go out with the garnage. Lamps get knocked over, so do big screen TVs. Even when yu're not being threatened, it's soul destroying to live with these folks in the same space. Why do you think relatives pay $88000 to send them there? Because they can't stand living with them at home, and they're related to them. I don't know these folks at all, and I have enough problems of my own. To be sharing living space with 3 zombies is not my idea of decent care. Maybe for them, they are brain dead, but not for me.
The food also sounds better where you have your mom incarcerated. This does vary, and I'm critical because I am used to eating only the highest quality meat and vegetables. Here it's actually edible about half the time for me. In the AC home I was trapped in for 7 months, I survived on Peanut Butter sandwiches and cheese and crackers and never ate a meal after the first week. It was disgusting, worse than cafeteria food in NYC Pubic Schools which I wouldn't eat as akd. I brown bagged my lunches.
My current SNIF costs more than double what you pay, $16,500/mo, it's all picked up by Medicare and Medicaid splitting the bill, and they take my entire SS an Union Pension checks and leave me $200/mo
pocket money, which barely buys me my daily cokes and brownie bites I like. In indepndent living, I pay all my own bills, medicaid pays a PCA to come 4 hours a day and after eveything is paid for including the best steaks or king crap in the 3 Bears Meat & Fish dept to eat, I still have $1500/mo for discretionary purchases. However, so far I haven't been called up on one of the waiting lists to move out. Hopefully this summer.
RE