Care of the Aging and the Dying and Long Term Care

From the earliest days of man’s existence, the primary care of the sick, elderly and the dying has resided primarily in the hands of the individual’s family, or associated tribe. There is strong archeological evidence that even primitive Neanderthal groups cared for their sick and elderly.  A pastor friend of mine recently stated that a major part of our modern society’s problems are that we have “lost our tribe.”  Mixed in with the physical care of the sick and infirmed, there evolved over time the growth of man’s spiritual needs.  Thus, there arose our notions of spiritual care, which tended to be relegated to our various organized churches and religious belief systems.  Western Civilization mainly used the Christian Church to meet these needs and made provisions for care thru its various rituals and practices.  Jewish and Muslim communities had similar systems.
     

However, at some point the Church turned beyond the spiritual needs and began to address the physical needs of the sick, elderly and dying.  Before the Protestant  Reformation in the 1500’s, this was done primarily by  various religious orders of monks and nuns.  One might say they were the original non-profit, social-welfare agencies – exemplified in modern times by the work of people like Mother Teresa in India and the Salvation Army.
     

In our Western cultures this physical care of the sick and dying has largely been passed over to the various secular institutions in the form of Medicaid, Medicare, government and non-profit sponsored mental health/social-welfare programs, etc.  This has evolved mainly because of the disappearance of the extended family (with our aunts, uncles, grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins and close friends all living close together).  However, the extended family was mostly based on an agricultural community, and with the Industrial Age arising in the 1800’s, it began to wither away, leading to the evolution of the nuclear family, with mom, dad and children pretty much struggling to survive on their own.  But the nuclear family has proven to be a brief respite,  due to the high divorce rate (over 50%), leading to an alarming number of single parent homes, who are rarely able give long term care for their elderly loved ones.  Of those nuclear families that have survived, about all a modern mom and dad can do these days is to raise their children and maintain a reasonable lifestyle for themselves. They are ill-equipped give long term care for elderly relatives in their final years.
     

All this societal change has led to the modern long term care hospice movement, which began in England in the mid 1960’s.  The hospice movement is structured around the notion that dying patients deserve, and are helped to find meaning in the remainder of their lives, while making them as comfortable as possible.  Most “right-hearted” people would agree with this philosophical position, and it is now infused into the medical field sufficiently to change attitudes, so that most medical practitioners now recognize that good medical care for the aged and the dying is good medical practice.  And believe me, with our past experience with doctors, nurses and associated counselors, this has not always been the case.
 Thus the medical practitioners, with their modern technology, have developed better means to make one’s final days before death freer from suffering – and more meaningful.
     

However, along with great medical advances, it soon became apparent that Medicare and Medicaid were inadequate in many ways, both in the services they would pay for and the fact that there was inadequate funding for such long term care services.  At this point the long term care insurance industry emerged, in the form of Genworth Financial in 1974.  Insurance carriers, seeing this increasing ageing population, with unmet long term care needs and people living almost 30 years longer than they did in the early 1900’s, jumped in to offer Long Term Care insurance.  They recognized that a sizeable proportion of our population would need some extended care in the final 3 to 5 years on average. 

Thus modern Long Term Care insurance was developed to help people protect their property and to accomplish the goals developed by the hospice movement: to control physical pain and difficult-to-manage symptoms and to continue to find meaning in the final days of one’s life.
    

Times have changed and although family used to take care of family it’s no long the case.  The need for outsourcing Mom and Dad’s long term care has become the norm with the explosion of assisted living and retirement communities popping up on every corner..  The family’s role now has become the care manager rather the actual provider.  If you’d like to learn more about the cutting edge long term care insurance solution that are out there simply fill in the form below and we’ll mail you the info.  Either way, thanks for reading our blog, we really appreciate it.