Made in India: Low-cost care for ailing parents

Sama

American facing unpleasant alternatives finds novel solution with outsourcing


"PONDICHERRY, India - After three years of caring for his increasingly frail 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...."


don't know if you have to register on the Chicago Tribune website to read this story, but was in yesterday's paper....

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Noodle

Thank you Yogagal, it's very interesting. My mum was at one point thinking about moving here. She has dimissed it now again, but maybe I will translate this article for her and try to change her mind again

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Darryl

That's a fascinating story. Actually something like this idea crossed my mind many months ago - would there come a time when retirees would choose to spend their remaining years in other countries like India.

Originally though, I thought retirement to India would only be for the able bodied, healthy retiree.

Nursing homes seem to be dehumanising no matter where you are - for many of us at least. My work brings me into contact with the elderly and it's a terrible prospect many face - mainly control in their lives being stripped away from them.

The other thing of course is how much retirement costs - unless the individual is up to managing on less - it seems that way now - the hundreds of thousands of dollars one needs in places like Australia just to be comfortable at the end of life.

I've often wondered if government regulation in India might be introduced to facillitate this new type of retiree - almost everything else is globilised - why not?

Darryl

federica

Some months ago I saw something similar about Thailand on TV. A Swiss national started a home for old people who need intensive care. The big plus there was that the nurse was sleeping on a matress next to the patient and the whole house seemed to have a very personal atmosphere.

Although I still have this in mind that "one shouldn't replant an old tree" I can understand that people look for solutions for the care for their parents/grandparents. Somehow I feel ashamed for our society that we are still not able to find more human and affordable ways to care for old people.

Here in Germany it is not so much the financial aspect (we have a compulsory insurance for that case that covers a big part) but the lack of homes with a nice and human atmosphere... sad...

Noodle

People differ though. My mother would not like someone sleeping next to her, being used to her privacy. The closeness of people here in India (regarding close living quarters) is one reason she discarded the idea of coming here. In Europe many are used to having two or three or more rooms to themselves, having lived like that for many years.

federica

I agree, the idea of privacy is much different in Europe. But it is a big luxury, too. Last year I had to visit several nursing homes, and a lot of them had mostly double rooms. A big second shock for people for whom it is mostly a first shock that they have to move to a home.

The cases in Thailand were mostly people who had severe brain damages after strokes and really needed someone for 24 hours, so it was simply more practical to let the nurse sleep next to the bed.

During my time in India I thought that it is a tough country for old people, and as long as someone is not wealthy I still think so... but if I would live there permanently I would feel better having my mother there than in an home in Europe were I could not visit her frequently. As long as she can live alone and sustain herself, it is ok, but if she needs someone...

edwardseco

Just looked into this and its 70,000 USD in LA for such care. Thanks Yogagal for an interesting reference. Whether old people are flexible enough for this I don't know. My mother wouldn't have been but..

capt_mahajan

At that age, moving to India with a progressive disease ... two, in YG's story... requires a lot of faith, and guts.

Shaktipalooza

In my country we'll fund a trillion dollar war but allow medical expenses to be the number one cause of bankruptcy. Disgusting.

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birds

India is not a tough country for old or sick people as long as they have money to pay for care and somebody who is concerned enough to make sure they get that care. In many places in Europe even money can not buy care.

dzibead

This hardly seems like a realistic option for most people, so for the story to sort of imply that it is just seems weird.

For one thing, the son also moved to India because apparently he doesn't have a "regular job" (or a wife and kids). Most children of aging parents wouldn't or couldn't do this. The son also just happens to have a friend in Pondicherry who runs a software company. How convenient. So did the friend "hire" the three of them so they could get "employment" visas? The story said that the son and his parents had "long term visas" that would allow them to stay in India until 2011. What kind of visa would allow this-- without leaving every 180 days?

Frankly, this kind of story annoys the hell out of me because it leaves too many questions unanswered, and it also implies that this is a "solution" to a very real problem, when in fact for 99.9% of people it's completely out of the question - for many, many reasons. This is NOT a solution. The solution has to be radical change in social and economic policy in the U.S., not some pie-in-the-sky "just go to India where everything is cheap" pseudo-fix.

Nick-H

Its a story, of how one family found a solution to its problems; a solution that included India.

If they'd told it that way, it would have been a great story. Its the journalistic This is the next big thing slant that rather spoils it --- due, as people here have pointed out, to the massive practical difficulties.

Visas? While on the one hand, India is telling independent individuals in Goa, "Don't come here to retire; go home", on the other it is freeing up on giving long-term visas for medical tourism. Long-term could mean care until death? I guess that is going to depend on the industry lobbying the government.

And we are all too familiar with immigration policy (if not law) changing overnight.

Of course, it might be the next big thing, and somebody has to blaze the trail.

But, just now, there are far more questions than answers...

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capt_mahajan

Years ago, a particular high profile hospital in Mumbai had a reputation... some Arabs came there for suspect medical treatment, specially during the fasting month of Ramadan.. and used it primarily as a hotel.

If what this thread refers to is really a trend, I can see 'hospitals' being setup in India which would be nothing more than hospices for the old/sick from other countries. Maybe they will even manage the visa issue on some spurious 'continuing medical treatment' grounds.

But it is hard enough for a Westerner to relocate to India when younger.. when old and/or sick, it really is impractical.

Sama

and that radical change in the economic and health-care system of in the US is going to happen when? I wouldn't hold my breath.

I don't think the story implies at all that it's an easy or realistic option. the son says "I wouldn't say it's a solution for everybody, but I consider it the best solution to our problem..." The story also says that he previously worked in Hyderabad so he's obviously already familiar with India. before anyone gets their knickers in a knot over it, take it for what it's worth -- it's a newspaper story about one family's experience. The story also says that India is lacking doctors with a speciality in gerontology which would IMPLY that maybe people should think twice before considering "outsourcing" their aging parents to India.

I can tell you that 20 years ago when my father was in and out of nursing homes it cost about $2,500-$3,000 every month THEN, without his medicines. That was for a "good" nursing home, i.e., one where old people with untreated bedsores and wearing diapers weren't stacked up in their wheelchairs in the halls waiting to be fed. The place still smelled like piss tho. They could never get rid of that smell.

radical change in the US health care system? The parents of my friends are still waiting for it.

and if someone can move to India with their parents to get them some decent health care for a lesser amount of money, more power to them. If my father was still around, I might do the same thing. and damn anyone who would judge me for it.