Made in India: Low-cost care for ailing parents

Nick-H

Sorry, Alphabar, missed irony error!

I'm sure someone else appreciated your post

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edwardseco

I had the very great pleasure to meet a foren who had retired to India as the wife of a devotee of the real Sai Baba in the 1930's in Ahmednagar about 1980. I asked her now that she was a widow did she want to return. With steely eyed determination she said, no because all her family were here and that was her home. I suppose it depends on where your people are and your attitude toward the final journey is. If you are so afraid of death that you cling to the latest health care for a few miserable unpleasant days extra the US is best. Recently had someone ask me to let them die and indeed beg to be let go from the misery. It was my great shame that I did not confront the issue. For me I want to be lead to a rowboat by the shore so that I have a point to make the first swim to Hawaii from California. A departure from India might be just fine also. However, a family friend in India recently spent lakhs to buy a hand full of heart pills from the US so...
Back to the topic, what was it? The recent Forbes had an editorial from the boss recommending health care in India as an alternative and included a price comparison. If its that favorable it might be good to retire to India or send elders out. Keep in mind that Medicare for what its worth does not pay for health care abroad..

dzibead

Which is, of course, the point. Because her family were there and it was her home, she had no more desire to leave India and return to the U.S. than an elderly and ill person from the U.S. or elsewhere would likely want to be shipped off to India for care, if doing so meant being separated from everything that means "home". The fact that care might be cheaper in India would hardly seem to offset the other intangible, but probably greater, costs, like the loss of family, friends, and familiar surroundings - in other words, home. So unless the elderly parent's social support systems could follow along to India as well, or unless the elderly parent already had some reason other than cheap health care to want to be in India, I doubt that the elderly person would consider it a good bargain to exchange those social and familial ties for less expensive health care just because it was cheaper for the "kids".
And I don't think that wanting to stay in the U.S., if that's where your home is, has anything to do with wanting to stay there because you're so afraid of death that you're clinging to the latest health care!

sgcarney

Last week the Chicago Tribune ran an article about a man named Steve Herzfeld who brought his parents to India so that they could retire and live out the rest of their lives with live-in medical care at an affordable cost.

I'm trying to figure out if this is a common practice or if Herzfeld is just an interesting story. Does anyone know other families with similar stories? Is outsourcing old age to India going to be the next big thing? Are there any nursing homes that cater to Westerners anywhere in India?

I'm an American reporter based in Chennai. I write for WIRED and NPR.

Best,

Scott Carney
http://www.scottcarneyonline.com

Mod note: Email id deleted for your privacy. Suggest use the Private Messaging system here instead.
And welcome . Enjoy the site.

lotus blossom

hey scott - i recently listened to a npr report that you did on organ trade in india, something that i have interest in learning more about. i'll look more at what you wrote in Wired on that. I also just read something in todays edition of Hindustan Times about the booming organ trade.

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sgcarney

Thanks LB. The organ trade in India is so corrupt it hurts to even think about it. I covered the story for three months and have thrown up my hands in disgust. Instead I'm off to bangalore next week to talk with the survivors of acid violence. I need to get a more cheery job.

lotus blossom

sorry to hear that, though with what i know, it does not surprise me.

also something i've researched; i've seen a few videos on youtube of women from bangalore being interviewed about it.

keep up the good work!

dzibead

That's the article referred to in OP. Have you read the earlier posts in this thread?

No
Yes.

This seems extremely unlikely to me. India is not even interested in immigration by the young and able-bodied. In any event, outsourcing elderly and infirm human beings is not exactly comparable to outsourcing your payroll accounting or your computer tech support.

Maybe some of our Indian members know of some, but I'm not aware of any and I suspect that if there were, the article about Herzfeld would have made at least a passing mention of them.


Well, good luck, but I suspect you're drilling dry hole. You should probably look elsewhere for "the next big thing."

capt_mahajan

Mod comment: Actually, Scott wanted to start a new thread with his post. I merged it with this existing thread, but it now looks (erroneously) like he posted to a thread without reading the older posts.

ISN

Scott, you have an interesting job, have you ever thought about writing a article about the corrupt illiterate Indian politicians?

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sgcarney

No, there are too many of them for there to be an interesting story. Why write about the status quo?

ISN

That is the whole point; can you bring down the numbers by writing a story?