I WANT TO GO HOME!

© September 20, 2008 Imelda Maurer, cdp

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080920/ap_on_re_us/medicaid_lawsuit&printer=1;_ylt=Aoi3Z4P_dr7S0rWL6yY9bnZH2ocA

Here is a story (Copy and paste to your browser address box to read entire AP item) of Charles Tood Lee who is fighting mad because he has been "forced from comfort and familiarity into a nursing home." He and the other members of the legal action maintain that Medicaid, the agency now paying for their nursing home care, could just as easily pay for those services to be provided at home.

There are two forces at work here:

One is the ongoing political struggle whereby many providers within the nursing home industry and their lobbyists have been fighting to keep Medicaid reimbursement limited to services provided in the nursing home. They don't want to see their share of Medicaid funds diminished. As if often the case, however, the expenditure of Medicaid funds for nursing home care is higher than for the same care provided at home by qualified care providers.

The other force is the growing movement to provide services at HOME which is finding life from the demands being made by Baby Boomers and also by progressive long-term care providers who honor the deep physical, psychological, spiritual, and social impact of HOME on one's well-being.

I believe it is a movement whose time has come. The traditional nursing home as we know it today is modeled after acute care hospitals. One can tolerate the schedule-first, task-dominated way of life in a hospital for a few days or weeks, but it is no way to live one's life as a matter of course.

Lastly, none of this is intended to deny the necessity of nursing home care at times, for some individuals. Having said that, the environment and every aspect of the nursing home operation must honor the meaning and reality of all that HOME is for each of us.

The Colossus

Today's posting is not about aging as such. However, it is a posting that stirs the human heart at any age. We are all familiar with the words that are inscribed below the Statue of Liberty. Enclosed below is the entire poem. Reading the entire poem lends even deeper meaning to those inscribed words.

The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus, New York City, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It seems appropriate to remember the inscribed words and the entire work of Emma Lazarus at this pivotal time in our country's history as we approach a noteworthy Presidential election which will hold consequences that will ripple into the next decades.