BY MICHAEL HAYNE

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

In America, our solution to growing economic woes seems to be outsourcing. Got too many elderly workers with chronic health ailments? Then just replace those six 60-year-olds for 60 six-year-olds. Well, it seems that Germany has come up with a nifty way to control rising costs and falling services associated with its aging population.

To keep its out-of-control costs in check with respects to its increasingly elderly popualtion, a large number of elderly and sick Germans are being sent overseas for long-term care in retirement and rehabilitation centers. Before you start thinking that granndpa Hans is being strapped with Metamucil and stuffed into a shipping container, the system is actually nothing like that. However, some are calling it "inhumane."

"We simply cannot let those people who built Germany up to be what it is, who put their backbones into it all their lives, be deported," said VdK's president, Ulrike Mascher. "It is inhumane." (Guardian)

Researchers discovered that 7,146 German pensioners living in retirement homes in Hungary in 2011. More than 3,000 had been sent to homes in the Czech Republic, and there were more than 600 in Slovakia. There are also unknown numbers in Spain, Greece and Ukraine. Thailand and the Philippines are also attracting increasing numbers.

According to Germany's federal bureau of statistics, more than 400,000 senior citizens are currently unable to afford a German retirement home, a figure that is growing by around 5% a year. This is due to rising care home costs and languishing pensions.

"Considering the imminent crisis, it would be judicious to at least start thinking about alternative forms of care for the elderly," said Willi Zylajew, an MP with the conservative Christian Democrats and a care service specialist. (Guardian)

And while some think doing this would be very cruel to the elderly, especially those suffering with dementia and who may not know what's going on, it seems that keeping them in shoddy services in Germany is just as worse.

For example, Christel Bienstein, a nursing scientist from the University of Witten/Herdecke, said that a lot of German care homes are suffering due to lack of staff, and that care standards had significantly dropped as a result.

"On average each patient is given only around 53 minutes of individual care every day, including feeding them," she said. "Often there are 40 to 60 residents being looked after by just one carer." (Guardian)

And to critics who think that grandpa Hans is being deported, an owner of one of these services dismissed those claims.

"They are not being deported or expelled," said Artur Frank, the owner of Senior Palace, which finds care homes for Germans in Slovakia. "Many are here of their own free will, and these are the results of sensible decisions by their families who know they will be better off." (Guardian)

One has to wonder if these type of services will be coming to America.