Friday, January 27, 2006
So here you are fighting your way through life. You finally have a career with a decent home and a few nice belongings and then a lawyer shows up at your door with a bill for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars you owe to a hospital or nursing home for treatment you never received. Its bad enough you have to worry about health care for your spouse, your kids and yourself but now if your parents have little or no health insurance you are legally responsible for them too. When I read stuff like this I truly understand how the French were able to justify the beheading of their leaders.
Be advised, filial responsibility laws exist in thirty states and may be coming to your state! These laws are written for healthcare institutions so they can sue the adult children of elderly or disabled parents who are admitted to care facilities but cannot afford treatments. Translation, your mom or dad can no longer care for themselves so they are forced into a nursing home. They cannot afford to pay or they do not have adequate insurance......no problem for the nursing home. They can sue the adult child for the entire amount of treatment even though they did not sign anything.
When I first heard about filial responsibility laws I thought it was a joke. There is no way this could be possible! Now you could find yourself loosing everything you own because your parent gets sick. The state can bring civil and criminal lawsuits against people. So now they can put you in jail if you are unable to pay.
This will completely backfire on these treatment facilities. When people discover this is happening no one will ever go to a nursing home again. Who would want to jeopardize their children loosing everything? They would just sit in their house and rot or get some kind of assisted suicide. No elderly person wants to risk the future of their children and would probably extinguish their life instead of risking their child loosing everything. I know if I was elderly that is what I would do.
Why can’t we have health care in this country? Why do we have to lose our house to get treatments for illnesses or to die with dignity? This is another classic example of how our representatives in government do not represent our best interests. Again they took the lobbyists’ money and cast their vote in favor of big business leaving the little guy with no protection. I want to extend a big “thank you” to our state and federal government for making it easier for big business to take my home and put me in jail.
Be advised, filial responsibility laws exist in thirty states and may be coming to your state! These laws are written for healthcare institutions so they can sue the adult children of elderly or disabled parents who are admitted to care facilities but cannot afford treatments. Translation, your mom or dad can no longer care for themselves so they are forced into a nursing home. They cannot afford to pay or they do not have adequate insurance......no problem for the nursing home. They can sue the adult child for the entire amount of treatment even though they did not sign anything.
When I first heard about filial responsibility laws I thought it was a joke. There is no way this could be possible! Now you could find yourself loosing everything you own because your parent gets sick. The state can bring civil and criminal lawsuits against people. So now they can put you in jail if you are unable to pay.
This will completely backfire on these treatment facilities. When people discover this is happening no one will ever go to a nursing home again. Who would want to jeopardize their children loosing everything? They would just sit in their house and rot or get some kind of assisted suicide. No elderly person wants to risk the future of their children and would probably extinguish their life instead of risking their child loosing everything. I know if I was elderly that is what I would do.
Why can’t we have health care in this country? Why do we have to lose our house to get treatments for illnesses or to die with dignity? This is another classic example of how our representatives in government do not represent our best interests. Again they took the lobbyists’ money and cast their vote in favor of big business leaving the little guy with no protection. I want to extend a big “thank you” to our state and federal government for making it easier for big business to take my home and put me in jail.
posted by DarthImmortal at 7:53 AM
2 Comments:
Wow, this is terrible!
This is why I believe in taking care of your folks at your own house yourself. It's what extended family is supposed to do.
Kit, thanks for the comment. I hope you become a regular to the blog.
When my grandmother had cancer she was very sick and needed CONSTANT attention. With both my mom and dad working there was no one to take care of her properly. Even if one did quit a job (and plunge the family into NOT being able to pay our bills), there was no way we could give her the kind of attention she needed. Luckily, she had good insurance.
My point is that sometimes you have neither the expertise nor the available time to properly care for an elderly parent and must turn to a professional. You should not be legally responsible to pay for a relatives expenses beyond the worth of the estate. Once the care facility exhausts the money within the estate that is all they can get.
People are losing their homes and in some cases being incarcerated because they do not have the means to pay these enormous bills. That is wrong.
Post a Comment
<< Home