Senior Health Care Options

[bilbo.s]

Senior health care solution -

So you're a sick senior citizen and the government says there is no nursing home available for you - what do you do?

Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot 2 MP’s and 2 illegal immigrants!

Of course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating, air conditioning and all the health care you need! New teeth - no problem. Need glasses, great. New hip, knees, kidney, lungs, heart? All covered. (And your kids can come and visit you as often as they do now).

And who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you that you they cannot afford for you to go into a home.

Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income taxes anymore.
IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY OR WHAT?

[Dexter St. Clair]

How are the elderly treated in your country. Are old people shipped off to homes by their loving families or is just the tradition of new immigrants like yourself?

Are you speaking about your own country's jails because they don't sound like ours. Scottish prisoners are still shitting into a pot in their cells and slopping out.


Your perspective as a foreigner is welcome.

[bilbo.s]

How are the elderly treated in your country. Are old people shipped off to homes by their loving families or is just the tradition of new immigrants like yourself?

Are you speaking about your own country's jails because they don't sound like ours. Scottish prisoners are still shitting into a pot in their cells and slopping out.


Your perspective as a foreigner is welcome.

[bilbo.s]

See your sense of humour is still keen as mustard, Dexter, old chap.

P.S. I am only a foreigner here.

[bilbo.s]

How are the elderly treated in your country. Are old people shipped off to homes by their loving families or is just the tradition of new immigrants like yourself?

Are you speaking about your own country's jails because they don't sound like ours. Scottish prisoners are still shitting into a pot in their cells and slopping out.


Your perspective as a foreigner is welcome.

N.B.

For good-natured, relaxed and lively chit-chat amongst Glaswegians.

[TeeHeeHee]

18 months ago; well, 19 to be exact, I broke my wrist in 13 places (lucky for some). Industrial accident. The berufsgenossenschaft (Employers liability insurance association) picked up the tab for the operation and after-care. This included full skeletal Xray, intensive physiotherapy, ergo therapy and a few other therapies which sometimes involved driving around Baden to cover four appointments in one day; all expenses paid, and a special hard-leather covered metal-strengthened support was fabricated to fit perfectly around my wrist and hand allowing freedom of movement for my fingers and thumb. If I'd said I had difficulty having a J. Arthur they would probably have included a sex therapist.
Not long ago, 10 weeks to be exact, I broke my hip bone. While in the same hospital, after-care details were being explained to me by the head honcho once again. As soon as I'm out of bed and on my feet I'd be off for a few weeks stay in the Bad Bellingen Re-Hab Centre and then ... Ah, wait a minute Chef ... this case is covered by the AOK (Nat. Ins.)
Oh.
So no immediate physio.
Result? Blood's not getting fed to the damaged area.
Result? Necrosis sets in.
Result? New operation.
Yesterday I had an appointment with the guy who carried out the actual operation (same guy did my wrist) and he couldn't believe that I'd had no physiotherapy.
Ask your boss.
So now we're talking of a hip replacement and I explain to him that Plan "B" was a bone-cement + plates and screws restructure operation.
Says who?
Says your Boss!
So he will call me next week after he has spoken with his boss, who's on holiday at the moment, but I reckon he's on a hiding tae nothin' 'cos the German NHS is footing the bill this time.
Maybe I should have killed someone with the hedge trimmer and gotten special prisoner status.

[glasgow lass]

Thats a shame Tee, but did it never dawn on you that you would need physio.

[TeeHeeHee]

I know I did, Lass.
But I'd been instructed to keep my weight off the leg (max 10 kilo) and not to do anything that may cause further damage. After 6 weeks (when, technically, the bone should have knitted together) I started puttin' the pressure on. I have one of those Step machines at home and a good stairwell from cellar to attic too; and a fat cat that needs walking. But later Xrays showed that I was compressing the bone with all that look; no crutches stuff.
The bone part which goes from the top of the thigh bone into the pelvis is a different structure from the rest of the femur; sponge like instead of a tube like structure. I didn't know that. That was why they fitted the particular screws the used; to allow movement of the thigh bone as it compressed in that area, which they expected and I didn't.
When I saw how much the bone had compressed, sat upright on a dining table straight-backed chair and looked at the difference between my kneecaps - 3 centimeter +, that's when I decided I'd stick to both crutches till the next op.
You see it on the Xrays too of course but seeing such a great difference while sat at the table brings it home. Physiotherapy wouldn't have stopped that. It would of course have kept the muscles in condition in preparation for after the next op and I dare say them big elastic bands in the thigh should have been stretched tae the limit, but I'll pay for that later; I'll choose the guy who worked on my wrist and he's a hard nut ... but I know he's brilliant and well clued up and I'm glad I found him (through people saying don't go to him, he's a monster )
So, on with the show

[beth]

Re the topic senior Health Care. Just about non-existant here. No free residential care. Queue for hours and hours in a state hospital to see a doctor. patients treated in corridors, patients sleeping in toilets, toilets not flushing. Somebody living a thousand miles away deciding whether or not you need the medicine that you waited four weeks to see a doctor to be prescribed. I realise the NHS is not brilliant but it is a helluva lot better than people here can expect

[TeeHeeHee]

Beth, I'm only beginning to see that it's the same here. Apart from a major; sudden and emergency, op in the UK when I was 36, I've never been ill.
All my hospital treatments have been the results of accidents, mostly industrial, so there was always an industrial liability insurance covering the costs. With this latest accident, during retirement and at home, the costs are covered by the AOK - German equivalent of the NHS (or whatever it's called these days) and the AOK are saving where ever they can and how ever they can. That's why the intensive physiotherapy was sofort dropped and probably why plan B is being dropped and we're going straight to plan C - during the first op the doctors were under the impression it was an industrial accident till I pointed out to them later that it wasn't. (they were used to seeing that I'd been transferred from a local accident doctor and not my family practitioner and assumed that this one was the norm).