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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, thanks for your care and concern for your friend.  What a sad situation for her.  With no home to go back to, no family to help, no benefits here...she is lucky she is not entirely alone.

[b]It breaks my heart [/b]to read all the inhumane and unkind replies here.  If you have [b]family, health, benefits, a safety net[/b]: you are LUCKIER than this woman.  You are not more deserving.

There but for the grace of God go I, so they say.  Or theee but for the sheer luck of how and where I was born, go I.[/quote]

I suggest you go and do volunteer work with the elderly here in the US.

Do you have any idea of how many elderly Americans who are not in good health nor do they have funds to pay for medical expenses/prescriptions, do not have family who cares about them, their social security benefits are completely inadequate for basic living expenses, they wind up losing their homes or selling at a loss because of medical debt, and Federal/state/local programs have no support to provide them?

To be clear, these are people who do not have addiction issues, have worked and paid taxes their entire lives, raised their families without any government assistance, paid their bills on time/no debt, and have lived frugally. They are the ones who deserve your sympathy, or at least your vote to start funding care programs for the elderly.

If you think we are inhumane here in the US, I would challenge you to take two or three elderly Americans on a one-way flight to any other country (including European countries) and tell the authorities to take care of them until they die. How many do you think would accommodate them?

Zero. That's how many. Zero. [/quote]

Not zero, no.  In fact, my octogenarian father was visiting his brother on their farm in an EU country when he caught a cold, which led to pneumonia, which led to multi-organ shutdown.  He was hospitalized for several days.  He could have stayed there and his family encouraged him to, since it would be free.  Instead, he opted to fly home to NY so he could die at home because he knew it would be more expensive for my mom and my brothers and me to fly his remains home and manage all the arrangements from overseas.

He had no money except his socual security income; he had no assets whatsoever except for a 20 year old car worth less than $500.  He and my mom rented our whole lives.  I quit my job to care for him at home on home hospice as Medicare would not pay for long term care and his Medicaid approval did not come through until after he died.

In the EU country, he was charged $50 for his initial hospital admission but they apologized for that and said he would apply to have it refunded once his admission lasted longer than 24 hours.  His similar length ICU stay in CT resulted in bills of nearly $250,000 (covered mostly by Medicare but he had to pay his portion) but it was literally zero in the EI country.  It would have been free for him to stay if he didn't insist on traveling.[/quote]

An undocumented worker could get emergency care for an emergent issue. However, long term care is a no. [/quote]

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