Long Term Care - Essential Equipment..

When long term care is needed, there are always issues with durable medical equipment, whether your insurance is through Medicare or it is private. That is, of course, unless you are in a long term care facility. Then all the equipment and care is provided for you!

If you cannot afford a long term care facility, you will need to stay at home. That is what my husband has to do, as he waited too long to get long term care insurance and is now un-insurable. So, he is disabled and on Medicare. Thank goodness for Medicare. I don’t know what we would do without it, although it did take extensive research over months of time to finally get what we need from them.

We now have a hospital bed in our living room where the couch used to be. Medicare is renting the bed for us and it will be there for the long term - as long as we can afford to rent this house.

Not exactly what Martha Stewart would do and I don’t think our living room will appear in Better Homes and Gardens, but put a color coordinated sheet and couch pillows on it and it doesn’t look half bad. The best part is that my husband sleeps without pain. He cannot get into it by himself, though. He needs me to transfer him.

Once he is in it, he is a happy camper, but he does not want to stay there all day long. Plus, I don’t feel comfortable leaving him alone in bed if I have to run a quick errand and cannot find a “sitter”.

So, we are now waiting for an electric wheelchair, which will give him much more freedom and security. It will be a long wait, though, made even longer by the recent Medicare tightening due to the Bush Administration’s budget cuts over the last 5 years. Money that was supposed to be kept safe for our country’s elderly, sick and disabled is now being used to invade/occupy Iraq.

We’re not happy about this, as you might guess.

But back to the chair. An electric wheelchair brings mixed blessings. On the plus side, it will allow my husband to be able to move away from the one spot he sits at all day long. He will be able to get a glass of water or piece of fruit by himself. He will be able to get out of the house if it catches on fire. These are big issues for us.

Hopefully, the chair will recline, tilt and the legs will go up, so that he will not get edema in his feet, his back and neck will stop cramping and he will not get what I call “blue butt” from sitting in one position all day long.

The “minuses” are: These wheelchairs are big and heavy and they cost anywhere from 5000 to 30,000 dollars. That’s right, you read it correctly. Some cost more than many automobiles. Why? All durable medical equipment is outrageously expensive. The very people who cannot work are the ones who are being charged 70 dollars for a plastic shower chair! It is due to greed. Get as much as you can for your product, because the insurance companies will pay for it. I would love to see a U.S. company make reliable equipment for a reasonable price. Anyone up for the challenge?

So, unless you are wealthy or you have Medicare or other health insurance (plus a disability) you will not be able to afford an electric wheelchair. If you do have Medicare or other insurance, you must plan ahead.

We waited, because we did not want a big, heavy piece of equipment to lug around whenever we moved. We don’t have a van with a lift, so we can’t take an electric wheelchair anywhere. A wheelchair accessible van would cost another 35,000 - over 50,000 dollars, which we do not have. Nor do we have the income to afford to get a loan.

Are you listening Monster Truck? Can you modify our van for us? We’d do it for you, if we could!

So, my husband’s new wheelchair will only be used inside, as there is no way to transport it outside. No way to use it to get to the doctors, etc. Since it’s getting so hard for me to transfer him into and out of the van, we rarely go anywhere together anymore. He is house-bound. Which means that I am basically house-bound, too. But at least he will have use of the wheelchair within the house, which is all Medicare cares about anyway.

So, to back-track yet again, we waited until my husband was in feeling extreme pain while sitting before applying for the wheelchair or the bed. Now it will take at least 45-60 days for Medicare to approve the chair, then however long to get the chair made and to get it to him. He may have to endure 3 or more months of pain before he gets this chair. So DON’T WAIT!

If you are on Medicare, apply for any needed equipment as soon as your medical needs warrant it. I hear from the industry that durable medical equipment will only get harder to get from Medicare in the months and years ahead. Medicare will stop paying for certain things, pay less for others. That means that folks with low incomes will not be able to afford to pay the difference and they will have to do without.

Medicare cuts are affecting those who need it the most, while the rich keep getting their tax cuts. Something is wrong with this picture. Is this what they are calling “Compassionate Conservatism”? There is no compassion in in cutting Medicare or Social Security - especially to fund a war or make the rich richer.

Now… if anyone knows of a wheelchair accessible van that isn’t on it’s last legs, please let me know! Write a comment, ok?

And if you are looking for Long Term Care insurance, go to a Buyer’s Advocate for truly competent and compassionate assistance.