A curious and unbelievable tale

(rough draft)

A friend recently told me the following strange story; I don't even know if I believe it!

I would like to call it "Social Worker and The Hedge Fund", or "the Social Worker and the Wealthy Investor"---but that would be going too far..... although I do believe that Wall Street has invested into health providers, and WS does demand a profit......So, let's just start with some questions:

Are Social Workers Working to Bankrupt the Elderly?  
Have Social Workers Today Become Servants of Wall Street? 

Those questions occurred to me after hearing this story....

My friend's 89 year old father was hospitalized about a month-and-a-half ago because he was sleeping too much. The man did not complain about pain, however he was getting weaker every day because he didn't want to walk or even get out of his chair.

Finally, his care-giver said sleeping so much was just not normal. She consulted with a doctor and the man was transported to the hospital.

The man's wife worried that the hospital authorities might not let the man return to their home.  In the past, she has been told he needs 24-hour care; but neither she nor her children have the funds to pay for that.  And no one has yet suggested where the funds would come from. However, he was taken to the hospital, and she stayed with him in the hospital and helped him.

At first they could find nothing wrong with the man. Then, they thought that maybe some of his medicines had affected his kidney (he has anemia caused by a doctor's error during a “routine” operation). So, they took him off those medicines.
(Later, it seems, he was put back on the medicines; but nothing in this story is clear.)

For a time, the man seemed more alert. However, it seemed unwise to all

concerned for the man to go home since he was still physically weak. He is a rather large man and prior to his hospitalization the care-giver had found it difficult to transport him to the doctor.

He was, therefore, sent to a sort of rehabilitation facility.  It was said that he needed about two weeks of rehabilitation. His wife was not allowed to stay with him. Consequently, he began (and this is three weeks ago now) to wake up at night asking for his wife. Moreover, he attempts to leave the facility, to go home.

He was supposedly given an "anti-anxiety" medicine to prevent him waking at night.  Later it was said that the dosage was too small.  After two weeks, someone noticed that on account of his size, a larger dosage would be needed.  My friend thought that was amazing.  Only a glance at the man would tell you that he is larger than average.  Probably, my friend thought, the health care workers are over-loaded and cannot keep up with everything they are supposed to do.  (See a recent article in the NYT about hand-washing...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/hospitals-struggle-to-get-workers-to-wash-their-hands.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

The elderly man, my friend's father, even says that he is in “prison”. Apparently, he feels he is being held against his will.

The man is senile; however, it seems clear that the immediate problem is that he has been separated from his wife. (They have been married 63 years.) When she was with him in the hospital, there were no such problems.  In the hospital, he did not attempt to leave, and he did not wake up asking for his wife.

When my friend's father first entered the rehabilitation facility, they were told that his wife would not be allowed to stay overnight, although she would be allowed to visit.  (This created transport problems.  The wife is too elderly to drive, and so must rely upon a friend or care-giver.  It is not always easy for her to visit her husband.)  There seems not to have been any explanation of the facility's policy;  why shouldn't the wife be allowed to stay with her husband?  My friend finds this problematic.  Someone was heard to say, as if it were a sort of explanation, “They have their rules.”  My friend was pretty sarcastic about that, saying, “Hitler had his rules too."  And, "What is this?--A dictatorship?”. And, “What ever happen to the idea that the Customer is King?”

Now, my friend says that the Social Worker recently told the wife that it would be better for the man to return to his home. However, the Social Worker is not going to pay for around-the-clock care for the man.

I think my friend had something funny to say about the Social Worker, too. Social Workers are supposed to represent the interests of the poor and the weak, but apparently (my friend told me) this Social Worker represents the financial interest of the For-Profit “Health Provider”---or, at least, did so when there was a meeting discussing how the man's wife would pay for his care. The SW actually said words amounting to this: you'll have to exhaust your insurances, and then pay out of your own pocket.  Which is tantamount to warning the lady that she can look forward to being bankrupt.

Maybe my friend is mis-informed.  It seems odd that a Social Worker should be representing Wall Street.

It was at that point that my friend made a very cutting remark about bankruptcy and expropriation by dispossesion. Apparently my friend meant that this was a sort of legal theft, and that the Social Worker was nothing more than the velvet glove on top of the Iron Fist.  The Social Worker has to obey the wishes of the For-Profit Medical Provider, even if the SW has sympathies elsewhere.  

The Health Authorities told the wife that her husband needs “twenty-four hour” care. My friend quipped, “What a joke. He is not getting that currently, at this facility he is paying for.   They only look into his room every twenty minutes to see if he's still alive. That means he is getting---let's see, three times an hour, times 24, that's 72 minutes of care per day currently......That's not 24-hour, not non-stop care.  He gets punctuated care---a little care, with lots of gaps!"

I pointed out that the man was also visited by nurses and therapists throughout the day --though rarely or never on weekends--- but I guess I see his point. After all, during the times they don't look in on the man, he has fallen down several times.  And he has been found wandering around the facility, looking for an exit.

This is all very surprising to me. It doesn't sound right. It sounds to me like this elderly couple is being shaken down for the sake of sending profits to people who are so rich that they literally cannot spend all of the money they earn. That's the way things are going today.  It's all legal.  Another friend told me that it reminds him of something called "Primitive Accumulation".....but he didn't explain.