A lovely woman once lived an extraordinary well-to-do life. She and her husband had several children. Her husband passed away during the downturn in the economy. Because her husband’s money-managing skills were fairly deficient, after a few years she was forced to sell her home. Between her husband’s lingering doctor bills and helping her children, she no longer had anything left. Her only income became a Social Security check that amounted to about $1,000 every month.
Then she began developing her own aging illnesses requiring expensive drugs to treat. Unfortunately, when she needed help, only one of her children was occasionally able to give her aid. Her other children lived out of state.
One day the lovely aging woman went to meet some friends, slipped, fell and broke her hip as she entered a restaurant. Her health did not improve as she had hoped. And what bothered her most was recognizing that her memory was failing ever so slightly.
Now, this lovely aging woman is an “invisible senior,” isolated, homebound, orphaned, alone for extended periods of time, and disconnected from family, community and available human/health services. And she doesn’t live “somewhere else.” She is part of our community. And she’s not alone.
It’s tough to estimate just how many there are, but it’s projected that we have 500-plus invisible seniors right here in our community.
Soon her mounting doctor bills, medication, rent on her small cottage, electricity, heat and food forced this lovely aging woman to realize she had to move.
But moving wasn’t that easy. There was no affordable place she could find. All of our local senior facilities were out of the question. That’s because, unfortunately, neither Medicare nor Medi-Cal pays for assisted living. Her only option is — if some kind people cannot assist her with subsidizing the cost of her Social Security check and the cost of a facility that offers market-rate assisted living — she will probably be forced to go to a nursing home where Medicare and Medi-Cal will pay for her stay. But neither will pay indefinitely.
What she and our other invisible seniors need is for California to join several other states that have expanded their Medicaid budgets to assist those who find themselves in this dire situation.
There is a big disconnect in our health-care system when it would rather send a person to a nursing home costing as much as $30,000 a year rather than allocate Medicaid a few more dollars to assist seniors not yet ready for nursing home care. And it appears that with the senior explosion that has already begun, more and more invisible seniors will find themselves in this predicament.
Write to Supervisor Doreen Farr at dfarr@countyofsb.org; contact our state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson or Assemblyman Das Williams at their websites; contact Rep. Lois Capps by clicking here; and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein at www.boxer.senate.gov and www.feinstein.senate.gov. Contact Gov. Jerry Brown by clicking here. Don’t forget President Barack Obama by clicking here.
Tell them now is the time to act if we want to house and care for our seniors with hope, common sense and the dignity they deserve.
— For more than 30 years, Rona Barrett was a pioneering entertainment reporter, commentator and producer. Since 2000, she has focused her attention and career on the growing crisis of housing and support for our aging population. She is the founder and CEO of the Rona Barrett Foundation, the catalyst behind Santa Ynez Valley’s first affordable senior housing, the Golden Inn & Village. Contact her at info@ronabarrettfoundation.org. The opinions expressed are her own.