Medicare Offers Confusion Regarding Recovery Options

What do you do in a situation when your parent is having surgery and needs some recovery time?  How do you deal with the situation where your parent wants to recover at home – which creates a cost savings, no matter what sort of coverage they do or do not have – but Medicare Advantage wants them to go into an expensive nursing home?  You hope that the politicians who are trying to mess with Medicare figure things out soon.

So, in Medicare’s bureaucratic wisdom, it makes more sense for them to send a person to a nursing home that costs from the high hundreds to thousands rather than allowing them o stay home and have a nurse visit when necessary at a much lower cost.

This is some of the issue that creates the lack of confidence in Medicare.  It is also part of the reason that Medicare is having so many financial issues and so many people are predicting the downfall of the program within the next twenty years.

On the other hand, what could happen if the people running Medicare made financially intelligent and fiscally sound decisions – such as letting people stay at home rather than in nursing homes or hospitals wherever possible – the savings for those and other intelligent decisions would most likely be enough to save Medicare, if not extend it for years.  Add to that an efficient, effective and accessible system so that Medicare recipients could get good services that save the system money while helping the people that need help, and Medicare might just work indefinitely.

Certainly some of these ideas have been thought of, but why have they not been implemented?  This is a question for the ages.  Hopefully there will be some good answers – and solutions – sooner, rather than later.