March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Adding to the burden

The letter to the editors, written by John Houston in the Bangor Daily News Feb. 29, regarding the cost of his wife’s care in a Bangor facility, could have been written by me.

After caring for my husband at home since 1989 as a patient of Parkinson’s disease, I found it necessary in December 1995 to admit him to a local nursing home facility. He no doubt will remain there until age finally takes its toll. He is 77 years old.

He too is well cared for by people who are tender and loving in a facility that makes every effort to provide pleasant surroundings with interesting activities.

Like the Houstons, our life savings will soon be depleted.

I wonder how many readers are aware that our Maine Legislature, several years ago, saw fit to levy a 7 percent tax to the cost of keeping our sick and disabled in nursing homes? I wonder what their reasoning was behind this tax? Did they really look at it from all angles?

Such a tax depletes our savings that much faster. Do they expect each patient to die before they become eligible for Medicaid? Of course, under present health care provisions, such patients may not be accepted by Medicaid. What then?

Most of us prefer to keep our loved ones in our homes if at all possible during their illnesses.

Shame on the members of our Legislature for adding to the cost of the already strained resources of the elderly. Most of us with any savings at all have been hard-working, frugal people who have paid higher-than-average local and state taxes all of their adult lives. Edna L. Bradeen Milo


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