What do you mean Medicare doesn't pay for it?
Nothing shocked me more in the early days of caring for my elderly mother than the discovery that Medicare, the U.S.'s universal health coverage for those ages 65 and older, does not pay for so many of the things the frail elderly require.
Not home health aides for those who can't get out of bed, bathe, dress or feed themselves. Not an assisted-living facility, with handicap-accessible apartments, congregate meals and transportation services. Not nursing homes where the most helpless of the elderly live out their days with round-the-clock supervision.
This remains true, and will remain so absent a complete overhaul of Medicare legislation, which was written in the 1960s when life expectancy was shorter and fewer people lived long enough to require long-term care. But starting today, on the federal government's new Web page for caregivers, it will be easier to figure out what Medicare does cover and what it doesn't; to find community-based resources to take up the slack; to access other government and non-profit agencies that assist the elderly and their caregivers (most often adult children); and to find the message boards, online forums and blogs that have proliferated along with the exploding needs of these two generations.
Kerry Weems, the acting administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the driving force behind its new one-stop-shopping Web page, acknowledges that all but the poorest Americans are on their own when it comes to paying for long-term care. "Unless Congress steps in, we have to be obedient to the legislation," he said, noting that the Medicare trust fund is already in such desperate straits that it could not begin to absorb the cost of long-term care.
