Some State or Federal laws have posed some impacts to accessing long-term care services, which for some time has been offered in the nursing homes despite most people preferring community-based services. The elderly people who can not raise money to pay for their Medicare expenses at the nursing homes have been forced to sell their houses to raise money for these bills they have incurred. As a result, several elderly people have become homeless and depend entirely on nursing homes.
In the past, the government had taken the responsibility of caring for the elderly people in the nursing homes, but with time, the nursing homes experienced overcrowding, after which cities and counties started to run their own poorhouses for the aged people. Some people who saw themselves as worth started to claim that they were put together with crude, feebleminded and ignorant old people. The state appeared to have less concern about helping the poor and stopped caring about their well being.
The social security Act of 1935 which provided that old people in nursing homes should receive free government care was altered by the congress to prohibit payments of money for elderly people in public nursing homes. Although, people above the age of sixty five got small monthly pensions, state-operated homes for the aged did not receive any allowances. There is the need to call for change through advocating and promoting the well-being and independence of the elderly people especially those in nursing homes.
State policies advocating for full and justifiable creation of current programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, as well as Supplemental Security Income should be put in place and that would assist in improving the livelihoods of the elderly people. The government in addition to this has the obligation of seeing to it that the elderly people in the nursing homes receive quality and long term health care and has well equipped living facilities. The low income elderly people who can not afford to pay for their health care expenses are entitled to free health care facilities in the homes.
This would help safeguard their homes if they fail to raise the money to pay for the expenses. Advocates should help the people in understanding how to protect their rights against government polices that may pose danger to the elder people. According to Tracy (1991, p. 179) the policy makers have the obligation of altering these laws and acts to give chance for more opportunities with generally lower cost services offered at home and community-based long-term care services.
The elderly people’s family members as well as consumers and aging advocates for a long time have been calling for the expansion of these opportunities. The public should call for programs that give the elderly people a chance to choose where to get their own services. This would help the low income people get the services that are affordable to them instead of living in nursing homes that would make their homes be auctioned to pay the bills.