Yes! Without question, the system is gamed and for the worst possible reasons. Hardly a week goes by than we hear yet another horror story emerging from this or that nursing home. And almost enough to consider an armful of Nembutal (mass murder) as an alternative to the horror that now is residential aged care.

Part of the problem is the funding model which is directed to the profiteering provider rather than the elder or their responsible family/carer. Those of us still at home with a little assistance, cost the taxpayer less than half, so-called residential aged care.

Even so, recipients are expected to dip deeply into a meagre budget to help offset the much smaller cost of (once a week) home care.

Almost as if the object was to oblige the homeowner to sell up and move into residential care. thus ensuring their kids are firmly fastened to the rental market!

And most preventive medicine, chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, hydrotherapy HRT etc. is not offered as that would impact negatively on a powerful, big pharma's profit trajectory!

The other part of the problem is the division of responsibility between state and federal jurisdiction and the endless duck shoving of responsibility it alone provides.

And because this is so? Nobody in either sector is going to change it or even advocate change. Or indeed their well-rewarded role in this dog's breakfast aged care.
Alan B.

The turgid bureaucrat-ese that is this article made me read no further early.

ACFI it within an mm of its ADL BEH I say!

Thank you, Alan B, for your very eloquent comments. The thousands, no tens of thousands, thrown at nursing home residents compared with the hundreds available to fund seniors wanting to stay at home is unbalanced. There seems to be no concern for preventative medicine as you mention - so poorly funded as to be unavailable.

There are so many apparent rorts in the retirement village and nursing home industry that a Royal Commission is needed. It will be interesting to see the fat grubs exposed to the cold light of day.

The only problem is that we need to change the government to get such a commission!

Aged care that is profit based is a joke and always will be, you only have to read this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5379723/Prisoners-fed-better-aged-care-residents-Australia.html

Don't they deserve better? Prisoners are fed better than aged care residents as it is revealed nursing homes spend just $6 a day feeding elderly people

Nursing homes in Australia are spending a measly $6.08 a day to feed their residents, even less than what jails are spending on prisoners' meals.

A new study in the Nutrition and Dietetics journal found aged care homes, on average, allow $6.08 to be spent on each resident to provide them with three meals a day.

Prisoners are getting better quality meals as jails are spending $8.25 per inmate.

Aged care homes reaped $1 billion in profits last year and Mr Gannon added $6 for meals for the elderly in care was 'wholly inadequate'.

Australians living in their own homes averaged almost three times that amount - $17.25 a day - on food and drink.

The latest research was based on financial reports from 817 aged care providers in Australia caring for 64,256 residents.

The study was written by Bond University dietitian Cherie Hugo and accountant Stewart Brown. They say that half the residents of aged care homes in the country suffer from malnutrition.

The study found that nursing homes cut spending on food by 30 cents per resident last year.

Why waste so much funding & resources when the most simple way out would be a standard old age Pension & a flat Tax ?
The more convoluted the system is maintained the more open it is to manipulation for the benefit of a few & to the detriment of many.

What we need is a single government made responsible for all of age and health care. So that the overloaded hospital system can jettison the sick elderly directly into aged care or charge them the going rate of forty fifty dollars a day.As soon as their allocated medicare funding time limit expires.

We also need to stop subsidising the, for maximised profit, industry. And instead, redirect this (finite limited) money at the not for profit sector. On the clear understanding, that our charity is for the needy, not the greedy.

And health care is about looking after the unwell, not health consumerism Or big pharma's profit curve!

The latter the sole reason we are denied preventative medicine and proven miracle cures.

Cures And virtually costless preventative medicine do not boost big pharma's profit sheet, whereas, their management model does as in statins, their current biggest money spinner?

Which in a recent double-blind study, found only those on the placebo didn't suffer some level of cognitive impairment. And for what? And additional (av.) nine months vegetating in a nursing home?

Moreover, the same study reveals that the same lowered cholesterol and BP could be achieved with lifestyle changes much less red meat replaced with fish and an increased intake of vitamins, minerals and Omega 3?

What doesn't help won't harm if taken as recommended!

Recommend you type into your search engine, the case against statins, If only to see what some eminent English Professors of Medicine have concluded.

Finally, don't expect the current crop of politicians to fix any of this or do more than tinker at the edges, or get all gung-ho and onside during the next election contest, but back to business as usual afterwards?

Given, I believe, they are not only part of the problem but up to their financial necks in the for-profit sector, or ideologically committed to the for-profit sector?

If there's another more cogent explanation? I've yet to hear it.
Alan B.