Tag Archives: elderly

Budget

Governator Terminates IHSS for Those in Need

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget butchery cuts services from IHSS recipients.  After November 1, 2009, people with an overall functional index score below 2 will no longer qualify for IHSS.  People who receive a functional index ranking below 4 for any domestic service will no longer receive that particular service.

Functional index ranking is how the county determines the level of needs people have.  As part of the assessment for services, the county determines the person’s ability to complete certain tasks, such as housework, laundry, shopping and errands, meal preparation and cleanup, eating, bathing and grooming.  Also they assess the person’s control over respiration, memory, bowel, bladder, orientation and judgment.

Now, in addition to assessing need, the “functional ranking system” is being used to take away services from the people that need them.  Let’s take, for example, an individual who has a “3” ranking for sweeping floors, a “4” for changing bed linens, and a “5” for cleaning bathrooms.  Under the new law, the individual would no longer receive service for sweeping floors because the ranking for this service is “3” and therefore too low.  The individual would continue to receive service for changing bed linens and cleaning bathrooms.  

There is also a “functional index score” (as opposed to the functional ranking index just mentioned) which is now being used as a line drawn to sever services from those who need them.  After a social worker assesses a person’s needs, the county gives a “functional index rank from “1” to “6” for each of the tasks.  This ranking is then averaged out.  The result is called the “functional index score.”  Effective November 1, 2009, the new law eliminates IHSS services entirely for individuals with a functional index score below level 2.    

On October 1, 2009, Disability Rights California and other organizations filed a lawsuit to stop these cuts.  We are hopeful and hard at work to reverse this dark ideology as soon as possible.  

This narrow vision couldn’t come at a worse time.  At a time when the State should be preparing for growth nothing is being done to prepare for the exponential rate of growth in the populations of people who rely on these services to live from day to day.  Instead of alleviating the pressures that the future burdens us with, the Governor shoots holes in the bucket that he asks us to fill.

However, we are happy to say that persons who receive protective supervision or paramedical services will not have their IHSS services cut regardless of their function index rankings or score.

Uncategorized

Well, at least I feel better

Ok, before anyone feels the need to tell me so, yes, this was an exercise in futility.  I know it and anyone who happens to read it will know it.  But when you get to where I am, sometimes you just gotta go with what you’ve got and if it does nothing but make you feel a little better, it’s worth it.  I do apologize for not being as articulate and knowledgeable as others who post here but again, I am what I am and that’s all that I am.

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So what I did was, I went to that phony site where you can supposedly send an email to the governor’s office and supposedly either he or someone connected to him will read it and “take your concerns very seriously”… you know how they work.  I know full well that Mr. “I’m not a governor on TV but I play one in real life” will never see it and could care less if he did.  

Anyway, here’s what I sent.  I thought a little first person perspective from the lowest on the food chain might be at least moderately interesting to someone… somewhere.

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How cute.  All those subjects to choose from and I find myself in the OTHER category.  Kind of like being WHITE on all those idiot ethnic surveys.

If there was a subject category in that list that had anything to do with issues affecting the elderly, I guess I missed it.  If there wasn’t, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to add one so senile old codgers like me don’t have to rack their few remaining brain cells trying to figure out which bag they belong in.  Just sayin’ ya know?

Anyway, my message is more in the way of a question or two rather than a pro or a con so my apologies if I clicked the wrong little button up there.  I chose con because I am definitely con in regard to what you people have done to me and people like me over the past year and are threatening to do over the next one, and I want to know… and I don’t want one of those damned form replies full of gobbledygook that has nothing to do with the question… just what else is in store for people like me, who are the first that people like YOU start flailing at in order to avoid inflicting any burden on your good friends who pay the bills for your own extravagant lifestyles.

Let me put this in simple third grade terms and then, if you bother to answer at all, you can do the same and just possibly, that way we’ll understand each other.

I’m a 66 year old former state firefighter suffering from progressive congestive heart failure, COPD, partial paralysis… a few other things but you get the idea.  I am no longer able to serve in the army of serfs and vassals that you, the entitled nobility in this new version of feudalism seem to have established when nobody was looking in order to help you attain and maintain the luxurious lifestyles to which you have come to feel entitled.

In other words, after a total of 47 years of working for a living, I no longer serve a purpose as far as you’re concerned.  So… because you millionaires and billionaires all hate progressive income taxes and don’t want to pay taxes TO the community in proportion to the amount you take FROM the community, you have… just in the past year alone done the following to just me:

Taken away my renter’s credit…$347

Cut my SSI by $37 per month….$444

AFTER THOSE TWO HUD raised my rent $11 a month based on my OLD income so:

Net loss due to rent increase….$132

That’s just the big stuff… this could go on all day, actually.  But I’m not even going to try to start explaining to you how the cost of living increases… which I figure have added at least another 200-300 bucks to my annual decrease in discretionary income…   affect your victims, those of us to whom $100… a mere tip to the wait staff in the fancy places you frequent if you’re feeling in a particularly expansive mood… is 10% of our total monthly income.

Just those major cuts listed above have already produced a net loss of  over $900… roughly 9%… which exceeds even the pay cuts you’re inflicting on rank and file state employees… of my meager annual income  which had just crossed the $10k a year line.

And now, I’ll be dipped if you aren’t telling me that I’m going “need” to suffer even MORE losses because you “nobles” need even MORE money and MORE power to do whatever it is you nobles do with all that money and power you already have and you’re perfectly content to once again ignore or pretend to misread the will of the majority because they voted down your phony propositions last month.

I told you all that so I could ask you this:  Just how much more are those that have virtually nothing going to have to give up simply so that you and your yacht club friends… who already have more than they or ensuing generations of their larva could possibly spend in several lifetimes… can have more?  

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer“, already an insult to poor working people everywhere that had to have been penned by some rich, useless flipping parasite… maybe a stock broker or financial adviser… is being taken to some major extremes here, don’t you think?  Or do you even think about it at all?  That’s the billion dollar question, eh?  

I DO think about it.  I think about it every time I look in my pantry or open my electric bill or get put on yet another medicine to prolong my “useless” life.  But I think about it in ways that would never occur to you and he Sacramento Mafia

I think about how I’m sick and tired of being a pawn in the rich people’s games that you and your friends seem to love to play among yourselves.  You’re not doing zip for 95% of the people in this state… you’re simply serving yourself and your 5% friends at the expense of that 95% and you might as well drop the BS and “The people have spoken” rhetoric… because you’re obviously either lying or you totally misinterpreted what the”people” were saying.  Just admit it… you people play these games with the rest of us just because you can and it “amuses” you to do so.

And give us a category of our own for sending these totally useless messages that will never be seen by anyone but some clerk or intern monitoring the email and most of all… do NOT send that canned flipping email thing that says the “governor is very concerned, yadayada” .  Those things are a total flipping insult to anyone above about the second or third grade.  If you’re going to ignore me again, have enough respect NOT to lie to me about it, OK?

California, Health Care, Orange County

Watching My Grandma, Feeling “SiCKO”

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My grandmother was just released from the hospital this morning. She nearly collapsed in the bathroom on Wednesday morning, and she’s had to spend the last two days in the hospital. She was severely dehydrated. She had diarrhea. She couldn’t eat. She was extremely weak. Basically, this is what happens to a ninety-two year old diabetic woman all too often.

So we had to drive Grandma to the hospital. We got a bed for her in the emergency room pretty quickly, but then we had to wait forever in the emergency room until the hospital finally had a room ready for her. Grandma finally got her room, she was able to sleep, and she was able to recover over the next 36 hours.

Thank goodness we caught Grandma in time, before she lost consciousness. Thank goodness Grandma’s feeling better. And thank goodness she has good health insurance. What would have happened if things weren’t as good for us?

Follow me after the flip for more…

My aunt and I stayed with Grandma overnight on Wednesday. We just couldn’t bare the thought of having her stay in the hospital alone. She doesn’t like sleeping in a strange bed in a strange location, so we didn’t want Grandma to be alone. She was able to fall asleep, though we couldn’t (we had to “sleep” on cheap, uncomfortable chairs). We were there withe Grandma, she didn’t have to be alone, and she was at ease.

Earlier in the day, my dad paid the hospital $50 so that Grandma could stay in the hospital. Her insurance covered the rest. I guess I should consider my family lucky. Other seniors go into debt to cover their health care costs. I don’t imagine how they could ever be at ease.

Yesterday, Grandma was starting to feel better. She was starting to eat again. She was hydrated again. But we had something scarier to worry about. The hospital wanted to send a therapist in to help Grandma walk again! Ahhh! Scary! Another $300 tacked onto our bill! No!

OK, so we also really didn’t need the therapist. We can help Grandma walk. My dad used to work in a hospital, after all. But what if we did actually need the therapist? And what if we really didn’t have the money to pay for the physical therapy? Why should we have to turn that down for Grandma, just because we couldn’t afford it?

Many seniors in California face exactly that problem every day. They must go without the prescription drugs that they need. Yep, over one-third of California seniors have no prescription drug coverage. They have to worry about being “burdens” to their children. As more and more people become caregivers for their elderly parents, they don’t get the support they need to afford the financial burden of being a caregiver. To be honest, that’s what my family DOES have to worry about right now.

As soon as we got to the hospital this morning, we had some frightening news waiting for us. Grandma’s blood sugar was down, so I suddenly began to worry. Will she have to stay in the hospital longer? Is her condition worsening? What will happen next?

Well, I got some reassurance from the doctor. The doctor said that Grandma should be released today. And after a few more hours, a couple more blood tests, and another hospital meal, we were finally able to take Grandma home. We’re back at the house now, and Grandma is so happy to be home.

However, my dad isn’t happy that he has to go to the pharmacy to get Grandma’s new prescriptions. She has a new pill to take for her Diabetes, and another pill to take for her diarrhea. We’re not quite happy about another trip to the pharmacy for more drugs with more co-payments. However, I guess we should be happy that Grandma’s not one of those people who can’t even afford her prescription drugs.

Now that I’ve seen a little more of our crazy health care system in person at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, maybe I need to learn some more about our dysfunctional health care system and what we can do about it. I know Michael Moore’s new documentary, “SiCKO“, is opening tonight. Maybe I should see that this weekend. I know that SB 840 will be voted on in the Assembly soon. Maybe I should contact my Assembly Member soon, and ask my Assembly Member to vote for real universal health care that covers not just all our seniors, but all Californians.

These past two days, I’ve been in an emotional inferno as I’ve been monitoring Grandma’s condition. However, I know that many more families undergo much worse every day as they worry over whether their elderly relatives get ANY care. This is just another reason why we need real action on health care, and why we need it now.