This is a Bioethic Class, please reference to ethical principles and/or theories

Question

This is a Bioethic Class, please reference to ethical principles and/or theories in your answer

1) Should a national health care program pay for the custodial care required by patients with Alzheimer’s and similar disease?

Let me explain it to you, Mr. Faust, Charles Young said."Although your wife is covered by Medicare, we cannot pay for the care she is receiving in the nursing home. As an Alzheimer's patient, she's getting 'custodial' care, and that is explicitly excluded from Medicare coverage. Do you have any insurance?""My wife and I both have coverage through my job. But the benefits office told me exactly the same thing: My policy doesn't cover long-term, chronic, or custodial care.""I'm sorry to hear that, " Young said."That means that you'll have to pay the total cost of the care yourself.""Where can a sales rep get that kind of money?" Mr. Faust said."A nursing home will cost me forty or fifty thousand dollars a year. If I sell our house and use all our savings, I could pay for may be a year or two, but then I wouldn't have anything to live on myself. Where would I live? How could I eat?""The only alternative is to divest yourself of your assets so you cannot be held legally responsible for paying for your wife's care. Then you and she can both get assistance under the Medicaid program.""Then I have to literally become a pauper before I can get any help?""I'm sorry to say that's true." Should a national health care program pay for the custodial care required by patients with Alzheimer's and similar disease? Should family members (adult children or grand children) be required by law to help pay the health care expenses of other family members? Should people with incomes adequate to cover the cost of long-term custodial care or to buy private insurance be ineligible to participate in a federally supported long term-care insurance plan? We expect people to pay for the goods and services they receive. Since Mrs. Faust is receiving goods and services in getting custodial care, would it be unfair to expect her husband to pay for them?

Explanation / Answer

A national health care program should pay for the custodial care required by patients with Alzheimer’s and similar diseases. It’s a very difficult situation for patients when they do not receive the non-medical custodial care associated with activities of daily living, because Medicare only covers the skilled-care needs. The need to provide custodial care is driven by the ethical principle of Nonmaleficence, beneficence and procedural justice. Nonmaleficence is because by not providing for the custodial care, healthcare providers are causing harm to the patient by neglecting the needs of the patient for custodial care. As per ethical principle of beneficence, health care providers and the practitioners have the ethical responsibility to do good only to the patients. And according to the principle of procedural justice, health care providers should follow the due and complete process to satisfy the health care needs of the patients. Custodial care is as important for such patients with Alzheimer’s and similar diseases, who need assistance to carry out the daily life activities.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse T
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.