Nearly 70 percent of our parents will need some long-term care assistance during their lifetimes, either at home or in a nursing facility. Today, as many as 44 million Americans care for more than 10 million elderly or disabled friends and relatives.
In “Caring for our Parents,” a book that was released May 26, former BusinessWeek correspondent Howard Gleckman describes the financial, social and emotional issues these families face as they struggle to provide for the needs of their loved ones. He also confronts America’s dysfunctional system for delivering and paying for this care.
Gleckman is a senior researcher at the Urban Institute and a senior adviser to Caring from a Distance, a nonprofit that provides Web-based and telephone assistance to long-distance caregivers. He is also a volunteer at the Jewish Council for the Aging of Greater Washington.
A veteran journalist, he was senior correspondent in BusinessWeek’s Washington bureau, where he covered health and elder care, as well as tax and budget issues, for nearly 20 years.
In the book, which is subtitled “Inspiring Stories of Families Seeking New Solutions to America’s Most Urgent Health Crisis,” Gleckman uses interviews with dozens of families, his personal experience of caring for his own father and father-in-law and research to deliver an indictment of elder care in the United States.
The book explores such topics as: why long-term care should be part of the national debate over health reform; the emotional, physical, and financial strains on families struggling to care for elderly relatives; how 77 million aging Baby Boomers will put more stress on our nation’s fragile care system; and why private long-term care insurance has failed to protect most middle-class families.
It also shines a light on what Medicare, Medicaid and Medigap insurance do — and do not — pay for, as well as what the United States can learn from the way other nation’s pay for long-term services. — healthnewsdigest.com
“Caring for our Parents” by Howard Gleckman (320 pages, St. Martin’s Press, $24.95)