Children and other family squabble over the assets even before they pass. You'll see neighbors talking senile/demented seniors into giving away their stuff, or selling it for a silly low price (like a truck for a dollar, or my one neighbor asking my other neighbor for a free fishing boat). Then there's the scam calls...
Give it not too much longer, and someone somewhere will make it so debts will be inherited, and then we can all be milked even harder.
In reading the article, it doesn't seem to me that anyone is being taken advantage of any more than all of us are when we walk into a shopping mall, open amazon.com, or buy a home.
It was pretty clear to me they think the entire system is set up so that anyone with needs is milked to extract the maximum possible amount of money.
A rational society would be regulating those corporations to ensure they act in the public best interest at least some of the time. We're seeing the result of what happens when we are 50 years behind on that. And the current administration is generally rolling back regulations all over.
Think of the money at stake and it will become obvious that our current situation isn't mere happenstance. The chaos is a deliberate smoke screen -- perhaps not exactly planned by the current administration, but orchestrated by the oligarchs behind the scenes.
These days every few months there's a new "accident" reported in these places. They have been destaffed to dangerous levels. Apparently last months' issue was that the administration was wrong. A room that had an elderly person was registered as empty, but had an old lady inside. She starved to death because she was unable to leave the room and "didn't call for help" (probably didn't call loud enough).
It's an incredibly difficult problem with no perfect solution.
That last 20-30 years have seen increasing privatization of services paid for with public funds, in everything from infrastructure, healthcare, eldercare and schools. Of course they maximize profits (maximizing residents, students, patients) and minimize costs (staff, care).
It's the same problem, not a different one.
In public industry the name of the game is to maximize subsidy for minimal actual work done. Lots of people, but nothing happens.
If you were alive in the 80s you would have seen this in action. People who "work" ... but not much at all. Many people, but zero activity. I'm told it was much worse in the 60s.
It could of course pan out like you describe, but the only guarantee for it is if humans are inherently lazy, and while I agree some are I don't believe this to be a general fact. Just look at teachers or nurses for example. They're certainly not doing it for the pay, and a lot of them are absolutely going above and beyond.
Is your claim that not funneling profits to private holding companies and instead hiring extra nurses with that money would not lead to better care? Or what is the comparative claim?
Yes, I was alive in the 80s, and I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Elder care is hard, and expensive. Friends have worked in various levels of it at various times, from food services on up. There is clearly some good for people to be around a community and there are real needs that require constant attention for some. But there is a drive to do more with less which almost always seems to end up with stories of people not being attended to as quickly as you might hope.
Memory care is particularly difficult, on the family and on the businesses. It is just so all consuming and from the outside it can be hard to know if adequate care is being taken. Of course I do know someone who's mom put her dad into memory care, then moved and basically started a new life with a boyfriend while still married so she had access to the money.
My parent's solution is to day they don't want to draw things out. But I think that is easy to say from a position of health and barring any significant diagnosis there is more of a slow slide to infirmity than a clear juncture to make such a choice. We'll see, my family is close and I expect we will provide care in person. But also life is complicated and that is a ways off.
Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad will die broke in a retirement home, and your inheritance will be paying for their funeral out of your own pocket.
"Sell Your Life Insurance Policy. Turn your life insurance policy into an immediate cash payout" next to a picture of seniors vacationing on a yacht. Then they bring out Tom Selleck who looks in the camera and says "Would I lie to you? You can trust me!"