Originally Posted By: eljefino
My neighbor has a grown kid with Down Syndrome and he goes off to "school", even in the summer, but it's not enough that she can work full-time.
She also can't get benefits, working part-time, which she needs for her son's care.
The solution is to be on welfare, whole hog. There's no middle ground. The kid isn't screwed up enough to get his own private nurse, or institutionalized, but isn't with it enough to leave unattended. And it's possibly cheaper for the state to have her tend to his needs, though I imagine there are perverse (Federal?) incentives keeping this in place.
She could work, some, but sticking a private business with her "drama" (read: good parenting) and occasional days-off needs doesn't seem the way of this world. If she could land work in a school, so she gets vacations off with her son, some people would surely decry her as a lazy union member who only works 180 days a year.
Knowing the American medical system's cost, it is much cheaper to give out freebies for parents than to institutionalize the disabled parents.
Newborn daughter stayed in the NICU for 10 days due to apnea and jaundice (late term premie) and the hospital charged insurance $66k, she got RSV (cold virus) and make her not breathing well (low oxygen level), and end up back in NICU for 3 days in isolation room and 1 day on oxygen, and that hospital charge insurance $75k.
If parents can take care of them instead of bothering the "professional", it would be 1/10 of the cost if not 1/50.
I'd imagine this is the reason why prison is so expensive despite the inmates work full time.
