NEWS . . . FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Calvin Hill The State Makes A Poor Surrogate Caregiver I recently received a letter of complaint from a citizen, concerned about her elderly grandmother. It seems that she could not get Medicare to take care of her the way she wanted them to. Of course I referred them to the correct folks and then I thought of what the underlying problem was. The kids, grand kids and even adult great-grandkids just did not want to gather together as a family and take care of their own. It was that simple. Grandma was just too much trouble for them and they wanted to dump the responsibility off onto the federal government. Perhaps that is partially what is wrong with our country today. We have allowed ourselves to be lulled into the idea that we and our families are no longer responsible for our selves and we need to dump our problems onto some government agency – and then blame them when they do not operate the way we want them to. If you look back only a few years ago, families used to take care of their own. Neighbors used to help neighbors and churches united to help out wherever neighbors and family could not. The government was the very last resort. Now it has become the first choice for so many who are just too busy to take care of their own family. Yes, there are those who do not have enough family or the financial resources to help out their parents or grandparents, but those are really rare. In most cases, people just are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to care for their own. They just do not care if they abdicate their familial responsibilities to the government. “Just don’t let it interfere with my life!” What is wrong with this picture? Is the direction we, as a nation, want to head? Dump off our individual and family responsibilities to an under -efficient and over-bloated government agency?
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