Elder Care at 25% of the Cost.

With 40 million Americans providing elder care for our seniors and the cost of nursing homes rising to $6,000 a month, it might be time to start considering other options.

My Father-in-law paid for 20 years of nursing home care for his mother, who passed away a few years ago at 98. Could this be why he waited to retire until he was 79 (instead of 65) and now is an entrepreneur starting a new business?

Seniors head south to Mexican nursing homes - USATODAY.com
It almost sounds to good to be true: a beautiful serene landscape on a pristine lake with your own studio apartment, three meals a day, cleaning and laundry service AND 24/7 nursing are. WOW! How much did you say that cost? $1,300 a month? No wonder almost 80,000 Americans have already headed south of the border.

Of course Mexico is just one option, there are developing countries around the world ready to take in our seniors for a lucrative steady cash flow - even if it is just a quarter of the price of the US market.

It occurred to me, why don't we just import nurses from around the world (like we do technology workers) to help our country with our aging population at a price the average family can afford? Elder care is not only depleting of their children's pocketbook, it reducing their children's overall ability to earn (estimated they lose $500,000 in income caring for elders) and it is incredibly depleting of the care-taker's own health, who sometimes die before their elders do.

I am not the first one to think of this solution of bringing nurses in from abroad. The U.S. has been trying for years to fill nursing positions. In 2003 there were 120,000 open positions for registered nurses nationwide per the 60 Minutes story: Nursing Shortage In Critical Stage - Poaching From Overseas?.

CNN states in their recent article, U.S. nursing shortage 'going into crisis', that by the year 2008, another 450,000 nurses may be needed to meet demand, according to government projections.

OH MY! ... makes you want to have a plan for your retirement and elder years doesn't it? Perhaps that really expensive Long Term Care Insurance doesn't seem so out of the ball park now.

Or perhaps you are just now realistically thinking about venturing into other countries for better care at a better price (and often better weather.)

For an additional $140 a year, this American nursing home resident living in Mexico gets complete medical coverage from the Mexican government, including all his medicine and insulin for his diabetes.

Come on - really? If you haven't figured it out already the International market for U.S. drugs can pay as much as 10 times less.

Drug manufacturers figure insurance companies will pay the premiums in the U.S. but not in places like Mexico, or even Canada. There is whole Internet business that revolves around selling drugs at a huge discount to U.S. customers that are shipped from other countries at their prices. Is it legal? You will have to research that yourself. I can tell you one thing, there is a lot of political pressure from the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to make it highly illegal. Otherwise ... how will they and their investors make huge profits from desperate consumers?

Ok - I shouldn't say that. Afterall, I do own stock in a biotech company that will be manufacturing one of those new cancer treatments. And yes, I can only assume they will be expensive for Americans and less for other countries. Considering this company spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing this treatment, the investors (and shareholders - that is me), are hoping to get some return on our investment.

I guess I have a balanced view of the situation. It seems unfair on the surface (to charge Americans more), but below the surface, it probably is what is needed to drive innovation in medicine and risk taking by investors. Without innovation we will keep dying for the same old diseases and we won't be developing the technology to protect ourselves from these new superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics and can kill you in the blink of an eye.

Maybe I should go buy some more biotech stocks!