Frail mom and dad outsourced to India

[varun]

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/news/stories/2007/08/05/outsourced.html

By Laurie Goering
Chicago Tribune

Published on: 08/05/07

Pondicherry, India —- After three years of caring for his increasingly ailing mother and father in their Florida retirement home, Steve Herzfeld was exhausted and faced with spending his family's last resources to put the couple in a cheap nursing home.

So he made what he saw as the only sensible decision: He outsourced his parents to India.

Today his 89-year-old mother, Frances, who suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease, gets daily massages, physical therapy and 24-hour help getting to the bathroom, all for about $15 a day. His father, Ernest, 93, an Alzheimer's patient, has a full-time personal assistant and a cook who has won him over to a vegetarian diet healthy enough that he no longer needs his cholesterol medication.

Best of all, the plentiful drugs the couple require cost less than 20 percent of what they do at home, and salaries for their six-person staff are so cheap that the pair now bank $1,000 a month of their $3,000 Social Security payment. They aim to use the savings as an emergency fund, or to pay for airline tickets if family members want to visit...

[rodeodance]

1. The son is doing the right thing by his parents. Says reals about our values here

(regarding the state of our health care) in the good old us of a.!!

[enough]

3. I agree.

As a person taking care of two elderly parents, both with serious health problems, I feel this man's solution is humane and intelligent, given the options available.

Having said that, we do have to acknowledge that the reason this works for him is that the care-workers he is hiring are making a VERY low wage, so I don't think this can be seen as the blueprint for change.

[kestrel91316]

2. Pondicherry, India - new retirement hot spot!!!

Who knew?

Can I get a cheap house there with yard space for chickens and a garden? Like maybe for under $20k??

[Booster]

4. Good grief. My 86 yr old parents are in as assisted living

facility right now and they pay $5,000 a month. My mother has been diagnosed with dementia and may be forced to move into the Alzheizer's (sp) unit (my father will have to go too if they want to stay together) to the tune of $4,000 a month FOR EACH OF THEM. Neither one would ever consider moving to India however.