1. Who would pay for such care?
A. Much has been written recently concerning health care costs and cut backs in government entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Individuals are responsible for paying for their own care to the extent that they have the means to do so and are not covered by insurance.
2. Why is the issue of long-term care so important for this generation?
A. First people are living longer. Parent and grandparents may need care for the last 20 to 35 years of their lives. To avoid being overburdened financially, physically and emotionally.
Second, hospitals are releasing patients earlier than in the past. A parent who returns home from the hospital is more likely to be ill or frail, more so than he or she would have been in the past, requiring a higher level of care than their child may be able to provide.
Third, in many families, economics dictate that both spouses work. This leaves less time and energy to care for an aging or ill parent. Both spouses and their children may be away from the home for 12 or more hours, leaving the ill person alone for long periods of time.
3. Does the length of stay vary between males and females?
A. The data for those discharged indicated a length of stay of 9 months for males, and 14 months for females.
4. Why is there such a broad difference between the data from the NNHS study and that of Kemper and Murtaugh statistics?
A. The main difference is that the length of stay statistics for the NNHS are for each nursing home stay, and an individual may have multiple visits during his or her lifetime, whereas, Kemper and Murtaugh used different data (interviews of relatives of over 16.000 deceased persons in the 1986 National Mortality Followback Survey) to estimate length of stay.
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