comparing the costs of families …

… The national average for nursing home costs roughly $168 a day. MetLife estimates that to be $61,320 annually outsourcing the care of our elderly to senior assisted living or nursing homes. That’s a lot of money. What happens if you want to retire at 65 and end up living till you 85? The cost for 20 years of care would be $1,226,400. That’s even more money. Way more.

Medicare and Medicaid only provide limited amounts of assistance, and even then you have to exhaust all your assets before you start receiving those benefits. Drain those bank accounts, sell the house, use up all the retirement. Forget saving any money in your will for your family.

Whether the money for this care comes from your own personal savings, government subsidies, or a combination of both it is still a shameful waste.

Now this is obviously a hypothetical scenario with many factors that play into the numbers. Many won’t retire at 65. Many 65 and plus adults live quite competently in their homes and don’t require assistance till they are further advanced in age. Even then, those who take care of their health may only require at home care on a part time basis for significantly less the estimated cost.

Now compare the numbers above with the cost of having aging relatives live with their families.

You have the monthly additional costs of utilities and food. There may or may not be medicines to purchase, depending on medical insurance. You can at least assume there will be co-pays. Will the home have a spare room or will additions need to be constructed plays heavily into the total cost. But again, these alterations are a one time purchase and doubtful to exceed the cost of a single year of nursing home care, $61,320.

Now here all kinds of variable come into play. Is the elderly adult living with family mobile, incontinent, alert or oriented? There might be a need for at home care on a part time basis which, depending on your state of residency, can run from $24-46 an hour. Depending on medical coverage this may or may not be a total expense consumed by the family providing the care.

Also, not a lot of families are in the financial position to care for aging parents and family members. They may be struggling themselves to provide for their own children. I say “children” and not “family” because I often hear people use the excuse, “I have my own family to care for.” I feel this is a strange justification, as if you suddenly don’t consider your elderly parents as part of your family.

Depending on the frailty of the aged parent, yes, this can be a hardship. Will they need to have another adult in the home with them or are they capable of being left alone for hours at a time? If so, then the bread winner’s ability to leave the home and work is not impeded.

However if we look at the traditional model of family; the one the government, liberals and feminist work so tirelessly to destroy, you’ll see it was made for this type of arrangement.

If the family structure is modeled with traditional household, you have a bread winner and a wife at home to readily care for children and aged adults. If that family doesn’t practice the use of artificial birth control they will have multiple children. These children will, in turn, grow up and care for their parents and share the responsibility between the other siblings. If there are four children, each child can care for their parents 3 months out of the year. The cost and care (I will not use the word “burden’) is shared. What a novel remarkably simple idea.

In the setting, you also have the elderly parents in the home to help with the children and home care, provided on their health. A grandmother available in the home is a live in babysitter and God send to a married couple who want some down time together. In turn this strengthens their marriage. It also eliminates the need for daycare expenses, another government wasteful expenditure.

Unfortunately, thanks to our advancements and entitlements, no one has to be responsible for anyone else, much less ourselves. Women on the pill don’t have babies to grow up and care for them when they are old. Men don’t have to be fathers. Families divorce and split apart on a whim. All the while the elderly population grows and the birth rate lessens.

The answer is not a new tax plan with revised spending and budgets. The answer is not more wasteful government spending and subsidies.

They answer is family.

There, I just fixed the economy.