HEARING - U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

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Senator HEINZ. It sounds to me, and I picked it up from our
other witnesses, Mrs. Yelineck and Mrs. Rieger, like there is kind
of a nervousness about finding out about Medicaid. Is that because
Medicaid has some kind of a bad reputation?
Mrs. FISH. I do not think so, necessarily, no. 1 do not think so.
Chairman MELCHER. Would you yield, Senator Heinz?
Senator HEINZ. Yes, I would be happy to yield, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman MELCHER. Mrs. Fish, isn't it because you have to deplete
all your money?
Mrs. FISH. Do you mean with my mother?
Chairman MELCHER. Yes.
Mrs. FISH. Yes, I think so. That is the underlying reason.
Chairman MELCHER. Nobody wants to be flat broke.
Mrs. FISH. I believe that is the reason. I think you have expressed
it explicitly.
Senator HEINZ. Well, you said as much earlier. I am just trying
to see if there are any other reasons there. That may be the central
one, Mr. Chairman. People who have been proud and independent
and self-sufficient all their lives may not themselves or in behalf of
their parent want to see their parent put in a status which we call
pauperized, penniless, absolutely destitute, poor. Those are pretty
awful words. And that is what is involved, fundamentally, before
you can become eligible for Medicaid. And if there is anything that
most people fight like heck, having fought that way for a lifetime,
to avoid, it is becoming dependent and losing their independence.
So I think you put your finger on it. I was just interested as to
whether there might be any other problems out there.
Mrs. Fish, I thank you very much.
Mrs. FISH. The nursing care people that I did hire for my mother
did have some assistance from the Government, but this is what
they were pushing for at the forum. This is where I started, at a
small forum in Monroe, MI, with some of the gentlemen from Lansing.
They do have some Government assistance through the home
nursing care. But I was only allowed 9 hours a week is what they
paid for, and then I had to pay the rest of the 4 days myself. But
they did give you 100 hours a year, which is not very much to help
out with a patient.
Senator HEINZ. But that was available to you, 100 hours a year?
Mrs. FISH. It ran out. That ran out. And sometimes they can only
give you 3 hours. It is whatever the fund has accumulated.
Senator HEINZ. But as you say, 100 hours a year is not much.
Mrs. FISH. One hundred hours a year. Only 9 hours a week is
what they give. Maybe I misquoted. Nine hours a week is all they
could give me.
Senator HEINZ. Thank you.
Chairman MELCHER. Senator Pressler?
Senator PRESSLER. Thank you very much, and thank you for
being here.
I have made notes on what I see sociologically we are experiencing
here today. We are not hearing from the very poor, the extremely
poor. We are hearing from middle-class America. I might
say that I think the selection of the witnesses has been very good.
These are middle-class people. I know in our universities, when sociologists
write, they like to write about the very poor or the very