If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home

[Honeycombe8]

35. My sister is in a nursing home on Medicaid. The OP does make a good point.

My sister had a stroke at an early age, so she ended up in a nursing home on Medicaid. The mentally ill are also in the nursing home, since La. doesn't use mental institutions anymore.

She gets fed and gets a minimum of medical care. But...everything she has owned has at one time or other been stolen (all her clothes, her portable dvd player, her Kindle I got her for Christmas since she doesn't have access to or room to keep books, eyeglasses, toothbrush, magnifying glass, you name it). She doesn't just share a room with one cell mate; she shares with several crazy room mates who shout at nothing and babble incoherently. One is so off that she runs a portable heater when it's hot. She is never alone. Never has privacy. Has a closet to lock, but she can't reach it and can't walk to it. There are aids, but they are over worked and underpaid and the ratio of aids to tenants is so high, they don't have time to do much of anything.

My sister has teeth problems and has had for a couple of years. She is still waiting to be taken to a dentist who will accept Medicaid. There is apparently no one in town. They won't fix her teeth. Medicaid will only pay to pull them. So she will have all her teeth pulled....whenever the nursing home can take her to the dentist or oral surgeon out of town. Even then, she's not sure if that'll just be a first look-see visit, or she'll actually get the work done.

She is totally helpless, dependent on aids who steal from her. There is a dr who sees her occasionally.

She has been taken to the hospital several times with respiratory ailments, so I guess in that respect she is getting the same level of care as prisoners.

She has no say so over the food she gets, or when. Just like a prison.

It does sound like she'd be better off if she were in a cell with just one other person, where her belongings would be somewhat protected from the population at large. Where she is, any of the patients and aids can go into her room at any time and steal anything. When she goes to the hospital, she loses anything that isn't locked in that closet.

She does get basic cable tv (I bought her a small tv).