Last Titanic Survivor Sells Treasures to Finance Long-Term Care
- Date
- Oct 27th, 2008 2:33pm
- Author
- Eric Schubert
- Category
Some have compared long-term care financing in America as the equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Well, above is a photo of the last Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, age 96, who sold her Titanic keepsakes at auction recently, so she can afford care in England. When she was two-months old, she arrived in New York with her mother and brother after surviving the Titanic sinking. City residents gave them a suitcase full of donated clothing to help rebuild their life.
Now, more than 96 years later, that gift is helping her pay for care. Dean sold the small wicker suitcase, along with other mementos of the doomed ocean liner, at auction last two weeks ago to help pay her nursing home fees. The sale raised $53,906 - ten times the amount she had hoped to make. The suitcase alone sold for $18,650.
In the U.S., that amount would pay for just a year of assisted living. Just think how many seniors will have to give up their most cherished items to pay for care. We can do better as a country than having people give up lifelong keepsakes to pay for their care and simply rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
To learn more about potential long-term care financing solutions, go here.
Some have compared long-term care financing in America as the equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Well, above is a photo of the last Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, age 96, who sold her Titanic keepsakes at auction recently, so she can afford care in England. When she was two-months old, she arrived in New York with her mother and brother after surviving the Titanic sinking. City residents gave them a suitcase full of donated clothing to help rebuild their life.
Now, more than 96 years later, that gift is helping her pay for care. Dean sold the small wicker suitcase, along with other mementos of the doomed ocean liner, at auction last two weeks ago to help pay her nursing home fees. The sale raised $53,906 - ten times the amount she had hoped to make. The suitcase alone sold for $18,650.
In the U.S., that amount would pay for just a year of assisted living. Just think how many seniors will have to give up their most cherished items to pay for care. We can do better as a country than having people give up lifelong keepsakes to pay for their care and simply rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
2 Comments
For someone disabled by a stroke or other medical condition, long-term care is not some luxury they should be forced to save for or sell their precious possessions to get. People who worked hard all their life should not have to end their life with all their income and cherished keepsakes gone in order to qualify for "Medical Assistance" (which we all still have to pay for anyway.) Long term care for the disabled of any age is HEALTHCARE, and any healthcare program or policy that does not include it is no care at all. It does not take much or take long to end up needing long term care no matter what your age. If everyone, healthy and sick, was pooled into a single-payer system that provides full comprehensive coverage including long term care, the disabled could get what they need and the USA as a society would get more while spending less. The only losers would be CEOs, insurance companies, and contract lobbyists. No brainer to me. Everybody in, nobody out -- including long term care!
"Just think how many seniors will have to give up their most cherished items to pay for care. We can do better as a country than having people give up lifelong keepsakes to pay for their care and simply rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic." Here's the bottom line: if you want access to quality long-term care at the most appropriate level--preferably in your own home--you must pay privately for it. That's true now. It will be more true in the future as the social safety net sags with the crushing weight of aging baby boomers. In the meantime, Medical Assistance crowds out 2/3 to 90% of the potential market for long-term care insurance, which is the only other source of private long-term care financing besides income and asset spend down or home equity conversion. Get the picture? The private, for-profit marketplace is not the problem. If fact, it's your only solution to avoid long-term care access and quality programs. Save, invest or insure now for long-term care. Sell your Titanic heirlooms or take whatever you can get someday from a bankrupt welfare program.
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