Comments

1

A "nursing home" also provides, uh, nursing. If you require some sort of assisted living care, good luck finding it at a Holiday Inn. Apples and oranges.

3

Independent living in a retirement community, assisted living in a retirement community and 24/7 full on nursing care in a nursing home are 3 different things. Charles is confusing these three things.

But I will grant that the costs associated with independent living in a 4 or 5 star retirement community would be roughly comparable to living in a Holiday inn.

4

@2. Your numbers are bullshit.

6

Good Afternoon Charles,
Hey, good on him, Robinson. Whatever works. You mention that he is middle-aged. I reckon he doesn't need care at this point? So be it. As long as Holiday Inn doesn't mind, let Robinson retire there indefinitely.

7

Today's Anti-Capitalist Rant O' The Day (TM) is a stretch even for Mr. Mudede. Nursing homes cost a lot of money because they have to employ a lot of staff. To do things, as @1 pointed out, like nursing. And feeding you. And wiping your butt, should conditions require it. One solution to make the costs come out the way Charles apparently thinks that they should would be to drastically cut the wages of nursing home staff. But I suppose that would lead to yet another complaint about the injustices of capitalism.

Things like nursing home care are expensive, because they require a lot of labor & goods (Depends are not free, for example). Hotels are cheaper, because they don't require as many inputs.

I suspect that the real complaint here is that the government is not paying for nursing home care. Fair enough. But that is a question of our spending priorities, not an indictment of capitalism as a mechanism (I defy Charles or anyone else here to show me any kind of rational economic system that produces something that requires more labor and materials more cheaply than an item that requires less). It may well be that we ought to pay more of the cost of things like nursing home care out of the public budget. But that would not make them cheaper, only change who actually has to write the check.

And the statement that "this has nothing to to with costs" is ludicrous.

8

@5: Great! You’ve “seen the paperwork”. I’ve written the checks.

9

Charles: 'The story is this: A middle-aged man from Spring, Texas—Terry Robinson—posted on Facebook that he plans "to spend his retirement years at Holiday Inns nationwide" to "cut costs."'

It sounds like he doesn't need the care services of a nursing home so why would he choose a nursing home? A better comparison would be the monthly cost of staying at Holiday Inns vs the monthly cost of staying at some seniors apartment complex.

10

OMG way to take an interesting concept and strangle the joy out of it.

11

There aren't too many places where you can stay at a Holiday Inn for 50 bucks and change a night. For a month. After month. Let's disregard the transient housing laws that many hotels follow where they can't be used as weekly rentals. The HI express on Aurora by Seattle Center is never below $100/night, toward $200 during peak and around $130-$150 most other times. If you don't mind Moses Lake the HI Express out there is under $100. Hope you don't need urgent medical care over there.

While there is an issue with senior housing Charles belittles the situation with this click bait comparison. It's not well researched or thought. Living in a Holiday Inn is not assisted living. It would be more like senior living. I have relatives in a couple of these and have had relatives with long term care issues. I am/have been the executor for a few of them. There are situations like HI at under $600/month for means tested seniors. There are rack rate rentals not means tested for around a grand to a few grand at the high end. If you need managed care it's a few grand a month to several grand a month. We pulled a loved one from assisted care that was horrible and took them home converting the bedroom into a hospital room, dedicated van for medical transport and associated devices. Over the course of a couple/few years including a full time nurse it was just under $400k or most of what they had saved for the last 40-50 years.

Elder care is an issue. Rather than using it as a prop for your political agenda/rant the column inches would be better served informing people rather than a Trumpian fear screed.


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