Germany 'exporting' old and sick to foreign care homes

[dixiegrrrrl]

Pensioners are being sent to care homes in eastern Europe and Asia in an austerity move dismissed as 'inhumane deportation'

Growing numbers of elderly and sick Germans are being sent overseas for long-term care in retirement and rehabilitation centres because of rising costs and falling standards in Germany.

The move, which has seen thousands of retired Germans rehoused in homes in eastern Europe and Asia, has been severely criticised by social welfare organisations who have called it "inhumane deportation".

But with increasing numbers of Germans unable to afford the growing costs of retirement homes, and an ageing and shrinking population, the number expected to be sent abroad in the next few years is only likely to rise. Experts describe it as a "time bomb".

Germany's chronic care crisis – the care industry suffers from lack of workers and soaring costs – has for years been mitigated by eastern Europeans migrating to Germany in growing numbers to care for the country's elderly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/26/german-elderly-foreign-care-homes

[Odin2005]

1. Da Fuq??? This is wrong on so many levels!

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Not to mention creepily like WW2 "deportation".

Altho actually the Nazis just flat out killed the infirm in the late 1930's.

[HereSince1628]

3. Bring out cher old! Bring out cher OLD! Toss out ... err Bring out cher Old!

"But I'm NOT old, YET!"

"Shut up there. Your well outta that demographic for media marketing, now ain't cha?"

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. How Pythonesque.

[panzerfaust]

5. Germany, once again, looks to the East for Lebensraum

Only, this time, as a place for disposing of old, worn-out members of die Herrenrasse.

Doubtless America will soon embrace a similar deportation von alten Menschen to Mexico or India.

[Barack_America]

6. Horrible! How can they ensure "standards"...

...when the residents are in another country, with no family nearby to advocate for them?

[HereSince1628]

7. This is how they care for their own...how do they feel about auslanders?

[malaise]

8. I posted this yesterday and it sank like a stone

This is despicable.

[lunatica]

9. Historically families cared for their own elderly

I know it can't be done in all cases, but if I had been 'paid' to take care of my mother it would have been much easier to do so and it would cost the government much less than paying for a home.

Or if the government paid a day care worker I could have continued to work and still care for her at home.

It just seems to me that if more families could keep their elderly at home they would and then the cost of taking care of those who have no family would go down simply because of the number of elderly who the government had to house would be less.

There are solutions, but people seem to assume that families don't want to take care of their parents. I think they do, but they simply can't.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. I find, down here in the South, more extended family care.

Ranges from having elderly parents living with adult children to having the parents in their own home and getting help to come in.
Family connections are very strong down here. When possible, they take care of their elderly relatives.

[rainbow4321]

11. Unfortunately, that isn't the case in my part of Texas

I work in a federal facility that has an acute section and a long term care facility. If the patient is accepted into the long term care facility when they are done in the acute section, then their government benefits pay for it and the patients' monthly checks keep coming (to the family, since the patients' needs are being met in the long term care facility already)..and the family gets to keep getting the patient's monthly benefits checks. If the fed facility's long term care unit says the patient doesnt qualify, then they tell the family that they need to place the patient in an outside facility.
We have had quite a few families not want to look into the outside facilities if it means that they will no longer get the patients' monthly checks. Keep in mind that the check amounts would fully cover the outside facility monthly fees and the patient would get all the care he needs. But the families see their "cash cow" slipping away and refuse any outside facility placement. So the families dig their heels in as does my facility and in the end usually the family takes the patient home...and they get to keep the patient's check. The patient then becomes what we call a "frequent flyer" and is readmitted over and over during the next several months back to the acute facility because the family cannot provide the 24/7 care that the patient needs.

It gets frustrating because you can start to see a pattern...no matter how long the list is of outside facilities are given to the families from our social worker, they refuse. They will only accept the federal facilities long term placement as an option. And they will tell the social worker flat out...that they are living off the patient's check and if they give it up they can't keep their home, etc... OK, well THAT CHECK is supposed to support the **patient** and it is that patient who the social worker, our facility, and the federal government is trying to do right by.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. I saw similar issues with clients who were living off their children's SSI payments.

Everyone thinks that welfare is a dead program, right?
But what happened, state disability for the poor expanded to include children's emotional disorders.
SSI paid 600.00 per month per child till the child was 18.
and no one thought to check out how many children in one home had the same diagnosis of disability.
Certainly our Mental Health Center did not, since Medicaid was a huge source of funding.
So naturally the parents were very disinclined to place children in any special schools outside of the home,
or to do anything which might help the child's diagnosis improve.