so have you had to think about uh
nursing homes and the elderly that sort of thing in your own life
nah not really my parents are still pretty young my father's forty five mother about the same age
uh-huh
oh that's very young
yeah um
so that really hasn't been an issue for me
uh-huh
how about yourself
uh no my parents are getting older my father is uh
um-hum
seventy and my mother must be about sixty five
um-hum
so i'm starting to think about it but i haven't had to do anything about it yet uh my grand
right have they got any kind of uh supplemental insurance for that or
no i'm pretty sure they don't um they have some income from pensions and social security um
um-hum
but no i don't think they have any insurance that would cover that sort of thing
yeah well i've heard about most of that insurance i was wondering because it seems like what i've heard is usually that the stuff says uh kind of thing where they cancel you a couple of years after you get in into the home
so it tends to be kind of useless anyway
yeah its my impression those costs are so high that without something
um-hum
you know special you can't handle it anyway uh
right
yeah
i mean i think we might uh we talk about having them move in with us
um-hum
but there are certain health
you know certain health conditions that we wouldn't be able to handle and i think we've just sort of avoided thinking about it real hard
yeah
right
yeah
i don't know it seems to me that for the kind of money a nursing home typically costs you can maybe even afford to
to have a nurse come into the home periodically
that might be a good alternative i mean it is my impressions tens of thousands of dollars
yeah
dollars a year at that point yeah it seems like you could hire somebody part time
yeah
yeah what the heck
yeah
yeah
and certainly more dignified than uh
yeah its
than warehousing them
it it it does seem like there are a lot of horror stories out there and
right
uh
yeah
yeah
it's it's kind of scary because it seems like uh you know a lot of people you know it's it's uh the budgets of these places has gotten so tight
yeah
and uh you know they just really can't take care of them very well the budget and staffing especially if it's a state run
i saw something on Sixty Sixty Minutes a few months ago about nursing homes in Texas that was a real you know horror piece
um-hum
yeah it seems like every time i see something on television it's not good
yeah so and i guess you know we have to think about gee maybe we have another forty years before we'd end up in that sort of situation is it possible we could
yeah
yeah
put away enough money to handle it ourselves
yeah it seems that way
huh um do you do you have grandparents who are left
yeah i sure do they're they're pretty healthy everybody in my family seems to die when they're they're in good health but they get to be like seventy or eighty and all have aneurisms just drop dead
well that's could be worse i think
yeah i think you know that's pretty good way to go
if i could live until seventy or eighty and have an aneurism and drop dead i'd probably
i'd be happy
yeah i i think that might be sufficient might be sufficient
yeah that's that's the worst part um seems to me that a lot of times people wind up in nursing homes who tend to survive major things like strokes or uh
um-hum
heart attacks that sort of thing and then you know they can't really help themselves so they have to be cared for
yeah i mean it seems like in a case like that you'd need more help than ever to uh
right
to more more support and some way to live a fulfilling life and it doesn't seem like those people are getting it
yeah i mean it seems like they'd be almost just you know better off just withholding care to some some degree
well it's always a tough question you know i mean with not only the elderly but sick people in general you know when do you withhold and when do you not
yeah
yeah
well it seems to me it's a little bit easier with the elderly because you know at least they've lived a life
you would think yeah i mean you'd think hey the clock's bound to run out at some point
and uh
yeah
yeah it's something it's something like fifty percent or greater of all health care expenses are in the last five years of life
yeah um you my wife is a nurse and she tells me stories about uh
so
uh-huh
the things that people are put through the so heroic measures they're put through when they're very sick some of them are very old and some aren't that uh
right
um-hum
everyone really knows isn't going to make a real difference but they're sort of left not knowing what else to do than everything they can do
right
yeah
seems like uh unfortunately that many of those people who are put through those if they'd uh let their wishes be known ahead of time frequently they wouldn't have been interested in heroic measures and
yeah my wife has certain certain wishes that she doesn't want certain procedures done and i just hope i can remember what they are it comes time to deal with it
if that's the case then
um-hum
yeah well i don't know my wife's a medical student and uh you know we got some of the uh Journal of the AMA and American Medical News thing and it seems like that physicians unless they're in writing or video tape or something
uh-huh
um-hum
um-hum
that they're kind of in a
