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55 points toomuchtodo | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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WarOnPrivacy ◴[] No.46009401[source]
For 10yrs, I supported 1-3 agencies that owned/ran group homes for developmentally disabled adults.

These included homes for clients who were non-ambulatory, clients who had profound health issues and one home for dd-so. Besides living and healthcare expenses, the agencies had regulatory overhead imposed by 3 different governing agencies.

Even with all of this, the clients had lives with daily offsite activities, jobs, public events, theme parks, etc.

The per-client budgets of these group homes were tiny compared to nursing homes. They were funded by client SS disability payments, supplemented by some modest public funding.

These homes where founded and administered by boards made up of the client's families. Importantly, they were non-profit; they lacked the massive overhead that comes with shareholder obligations and executive salaries+perks.

They've been providing superior care for over 4 decades. After I left, they began to experience a persistent risk of funding cuts. These were driven by a major hospital chain executive who became governor and then state senator.

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th0ma5 ◴[] No.46009441[source]
So why are nursing homes so expensive?
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1. Analemma_ ◴[] No.46009645[source]
Certainly privately owned ones skim a lot off the top to pay shareholders and bonuses, but the reality is that the cost of caregiving is almost entirely labor and rent, and those things do not benefit from efficiency gains, so the cost of service just goes up forever because of Baumol's cost disease.

Realistically the only way to stabilize the price of caregiving is to automate the hell out of it, like Japan is trying to do. It's a rather dystopian thought that the only way senior care won't bankrupt us is if we have robots do it all, but what can you do.

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2. CarpaDorada ◴[] No.46010247[source]
The Baumol effect is only one component and not the entire story. Those that run these services will extract as many profits as possible for themselves. When the robots will manage geriatric care, there is no reason to not continue exploiting the patients' wallets.
3. Nextgrid ◴[] No.46010304[source]
> labor and rent

Labor, who pays a sizeable chunk of their income on rent... and rent, well is rent. Rent is only expensive when demand outstrips supply, and demand keeps being artificially constrained by existing property owners (of which boomers are a large chunk) not willing to take a hit on their property value. Seems like a self-inflicted problem.