I'm just speechless about all of that at this point and very glad the I live in Europe, where we have things like these figured out.
(edit: yeeeeaaaaaah, not everything is perfect in Europe, either, but nobody will be left with a bill of 150k € if your grandmother wants to die in her home.)
OP's grandmother had a team of support people giving her medication, changing diapers, monitoring equipment for an undisclosed period of months.
No where in Europe is 24hr support available for free in your own home. That simply isn't scalable.
Moreover, it should be noted that none of the family was willing to do this - so they were forced hire outside care.
The US healthcare system isn't great - but this article smells like spoiled rich people annoyed that they have to pay for rich-people-level service themselves.
She was fortunate enough to afford the constant care and was basically employing a full-time nurse. That adds up.
Watching someone pass away is never pleasant, but there are limits to public generosity.
> Currently, Medicare only covers an average of two hours per day, five days a week, of home health aide coverage for a patient in hospice care.
But yeah, if you've got the money to take care of yourself, you'll have to pay it. My grandparents had a low-enough income that the care takers (twice a day) were free for them.
Also, check with your local council as there's a lot of support that is not well publicised (particularly for making modifications to your home - which can lead to reduced council tax bills). Unfortunately GPs often don't seem to be aware of what is available - it could be worth talking to your local hospice (even if you aren't end of life) as they tend to be much more clued in.
i'm not complaining about the nhs here - in general the help and treatment i've received has been exemplary.
In the US you have a lot of different options depending on financial ability and your choices. Some aren't choices, and some are. In this case the individual choose to spend an in-ordinate amount of money - their choice and they have to pay for their choice.
Do you have the luxury of choosing in your country or does the government choose for you?
I'm unsure where this belief originates from, but it's not true that state provided care is the only care in countries that offer it. There's very few places on earth where money cannot be used to improve quality of care: the state guarantees provision of a minimum level of care, rather than impose a limit on the maximum.
A 24/7 _at home_ and _medical_ care will cost a fortune anywhere in the world and is never covered unless you have a very expensive private insurance to begin with
Also, there are different healthcare systems around the world. I don't know why you would be so sure about the impossibility of at-home nursing.
Hospitals and health systems are at capacity pretty much everywhere, they can barely keep up with people in them, they won't dispatch nurses and docs around.
And my example was in France, far from being hell on earth when it comes to health
My father passed away last year and towards the end he had carers at the house 24x7.
I seriously doubt that.
That’s what this person spent on their grandmother. There’s a huge difference between “wanting to die at home” and “wanting round the clock care at home”.
You can die at home for effectively free.
You could do that. I have seen it before, back in Spain. It is expensive, but not $13,000 a month.
It would not make much sense to pay this much, when nurses themselves make, on average, a small fraction of that.
As everyone knows, most of the US budget goes into defense. Most Americans are not keen on that fact, but I don’t see Europeans complaining about it when countries like Russia go on the rampage.
- article from CNN
Some of this is driven by ideology - low tax, small state. And some of it is driven by greed - lobbying by large US healthcare groups, or more obviously owning shares in those groups.
This has led to an almost deliberate policy of mismanaging and underfunding in real terms the NHS.
In the USA, my grandma died in my parent’s home 10 years ago and there was no bill. She was upper 90s, refused treatment, and doctors prescribed morphine for us to give her so she could die peacefully.
I think a nurse came everyday just to check on things.