Make Room For Daddy (Or Mommy) : Republican cuts in Medicare and nursing home funding will push a lot of seniors into their children’s homes.

The trouble with old people these days is that they are not willing to die when it’s most convenient for the rest of us. There was a time when seniors were lucky to hit 65, but now those old codgers are like the Energizer Bunny, they just keep going.

Seniors annoy the younger taxpayers by doing everything to survive, including exercise, dieting and even drinking red wine. Worse yet, they remain politically active and vote in larger numbers. And using that political clout, these ingrates expect to collect on the medical care that they were promised and which they have paid for. Sure, they were promised that, but, as the Republican Congressional leadership points out, the seniors broke their end of the deal by living too long.

Whose fault is that? The Democrats, of course. Newt Gingrich is right: The seniors’ conspiracy to stick around was abetted by a whole range of knee-jerk liberal programs that made their golden years worth living. Without Medicare, Medicaid, senior housing and social centers where they do those stretching exercises, a lot more seniors would have expired years earlier.

I recall the case of my own mother, who had the nerve to outlive two doctors who warned her that her Parkinson’s disease was terminal. It was, eventually, but she cheated for almost 20 years by staggering through challenging walks to various lectures, the library and plays, keeping both body and mind alert. She even got on a senior citizen center bus to go picket the governor and legislators in Sacramento every time it looked like they might stick it to the old people.

Why didn’t her son just take care of her, my Libertarian readers at this very moment are asking? Well, I did. At first she resisted, much preferring her independence and friends in the city to our suburban life in Orange County which she termed “boring.” But after her second mugging, once the new plastic hips were in place, we kidnaped her and suddenly there I was, for seven years, the only townhouse dweller in our gated community with a grandmother in residence.

Mostly, our living arrangement--Mom, me, my wife, two kids, and a large Akita dog--was viewed by the neighbors as weird. At worst, a grown man living with his mother could be seen as kinky and at best, our extended family suggested a possible violation of the condo association’s rules. We only had three bedrooms after all. The architects of yuppie housing do not expect sickly old people to spend the night.

My wife and I actually liked Mom: She read more books than we did and kept us intellectually on our toes. Our little kids adored her, once they got used to the teeth in the glass jar routine. They doubled up so she could have a room and rushed to her assistance when she refused to use the walker and kept falling over. They loved her stories, her endless jokes, even though she would come to forget the punch lines, and found it liberating that there was an adult in the house who sided with them.

So yes, it was a very positive experience. And now, with the Republican cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, including a devastating attack on federal support for nursing homes, many more couples will get the opportunity to take in family members who are sick and old. For the last few years of her life, my mother required a 24-hour caretaker; she became incontinent, we had to feed her, and there were frequent doctor and hospital visits. I hope your family is willing to take on that responsibility; my spouse is a saint, but I don’t know about yours.

Oh, I almost forgot, unless you’re seriously wealthy, if the Republican cuts go through, you’d better also be prepared to go broke. Medicare kicked in in 1965 when my mother retired after more than four decades of sewing clothes. At that time, I was still getting my act together, and if not for the Medicare supplement to my mother’s meager union health plan, I would have had trouble supporting her. Even when I was more prosperous, the costs of a growing family were spiraling and without Medicare my mother’s medical bills would have wiped out the kids’ college funds and more.

Anybody who tells you Medicare is a program that only benefits seniors has never had to care for a parent who is old. Take the word of this rapidly aging yuppie: wire your congresspersons to keep their mitts off the programs that help seniors, or be prepared to turn your snappy condo into an underfunded nursing home.