[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 78 (Thursday, May 27, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6434-S6435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       LETTER FROM A NURSING HOME

 Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to share a letter I 
received from my constituent, Ms. Shirley Roney of Bonnie, Illinois. 
Ms. Roney shared with me a letter she wrote to President Clinton on 
behalf of her grandmother, Vaneeta Allen. This ``Letter from a Nursing 
Home'' reminds us of some of the important issues many American 
families face every day.
  Long-term care is a serious concern for many elderly and disabled 
Americans. Too many of our citizens face losing everything they have 
worked their whole lives for, just so they can pay for nursing home 
care. Medicare was not designed to provide coverage for long-term care, 
and long-term care insurance is often unavailable due to preexisting 
medical conditions, or it is out of financial reach for seniors. We 
must continue to explore other options to assist those like Vaneeta 
Allen who must rely on nursing home care.
  This letter does not have all of the answers, but we will never have 
the answers if we lose sight of the struggles and simple dignity of 
people like Mrs. Allen.
  I ask the letter be printed in the Record.
  The letter follows:

                                                   March 30, 1999.
       Dear President Clinton: for the past four months my 
     grandmother has been in a nursing home. This has been a very 
     ``troubling time.'' I have spent the past four months 
     learning about the way we have failed to adequately provide 
     for those who built this country.
       Actually this ``Letter from a Nursing Home'' came to me in 
     the middle of a sleepless night when I was struggling to 
     figure out some way to help my mom (grandmother) keep her 
     home. It would have broken her heart to lose her home.
       It came to me that the least I could do was express her 
     feelings in words on paper. I was also her Power of Attorney. 
     I wrote the letter on the 14th and before I could mail it, 
     we, the family were called to her bedside. She died on March 
     18.
       So I changed it from ``Letter from a Nursing Home'' to 
     ``Letter from Heaven'' and read it as a eulogy at her 
     funeral.
       I appreciate the way you have always during your presidency 
     tried to guarantee the rights our fathers fought for to all 
     Americans.
     Shirley Roney.
                                  ____


                       Letter From A Nursing Home

                                                   March 14, 1999.
     President William J. Clinton,
     The White House,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. President: My name is Vaneeta Allen. I will be 93 
     years of age on August 11, 1999, and for most of my adult 
     life, I have lived independently in a house I have owned.
       My dad was a sharecropper. When I was a child, we never 
     owned our own home. It was my dream to own a home when I grew 
     up. I was the second of nine surviving children, the first 
     girl. I wanted to be a schoolteacher but had to quit school 
     at 13 to go to work to help support myself and my brothers 
     and sisters. The year was 1919.
       When my children were little we lived through the Great 
     Depression and we celebrated when Franklin D. Roosevelt 
     raised the minimum wage so we could make as much as $1 a day 
     in the factory.
       And finally, we bought for $5 an acre a little farm 
     southwest of Bonnie and moved ourselves and our two surviving 
     children into a 2-room house. We built on two bedrooms and a 
     bathroom and a kitchen. There, we, my husband and I, spent 
     our working years. The year was 1941.
       And we sent our son and son-in-law off to war. There in 
     that home I stood with my ears to the radio listening to the 
     troop movements as our sons marched across Europe, afraid we 
     would lose our sons and maybe our country. Our sons saved our 
     country. And my son came home, but our son-in-law was nearly 
     killed in the Philippines and spent the rest of his short 
     life as a totally disabled veteran in and out of veterans' 
     hospitals. Our son was killed in a car crash on April 12, 
     1951, at 25 years of age.
       Our family bought its citizenship with blood shed on two 
     foreign soils. But it was the price of liberty. We taught our 
     grandchildren, half of whom were fatherless and half of whom 
     were the children of a totally disabled father that the great 
     price they had paid was not in vain.
       We taught them about the greatness of America and how all 
     men and women could live free.
       In the early 60s, we were forced to sell our farm to the 
     government so they could build Rend Lake there. It was the 
     end of our farming years anyway and we needed to move away 
     from the farm. But our grandchildren cried because they 
     didn't want to leave that farm.
       We built and moved into a home in Bonnie, a mile and a half 
     from our farm. And there we, my husband and I, lived together 
     until his death in 1981, and I lived until late October 1998, 
     when I was hospitalized after a fall and nearly died.
       Now they tell me I cannot live independently. But I dream 
     every day of going home just one more time. Now, not by 
     choice, I am living in a nursing home. I have a nice room and 
     I am surrounded by others who are just like me. But those of 
     us who still are of sound mind want just to go home again.
       When my husband and I retired, we thought we had adequate 
     savings. But inflation and high medical costs have taken all 
     of

[[Page S6435]]

     my savings. Perhaps I lived too long, but still I want to 
     live.
       Last year my total income from social security was $6,984, 
     but I managed to keep my home and pay my bills with that. The 
     only other income I had was less than $100 from renting some 
     land. This year my monthly income from social security per 
     month is $582. My checkbook total is now around $1500.
       The cost of the nursing home is about $92 per day much of 
     which goes to medical costs, not for expensive paid help. If 
     anything, there needs to me more money for paid help.
       I have been given two options to pay--either sell my home 
     and give up any hope of ever returning or get Public Aid 
     Assistance. In the hope of returning home, I applied for 
     Public Aid. Since my total income is $582 month, out of that 
     I must pay, to keep my home, electricity and gas $74, water 
     and sewer $25, trash pick up $15, house insurance ($367 per 
     year) or $32 per month. I also have paid and want to continue 
     to pay $103 per month for a medicare supplement.
       That leaves $334 out of my social security to pay the 
     nursing home. And you know what is worse of all, I am made to 
     feel like a failure because I cannot pay out of pocket 
     $36,000 to $40,000 a year for a nursing home. And there are 
     thousands, maybe millions of me throughout this country.
       Once we could borrow money on just our good names. Now our 
     homes have become the price of our aged care. Soon I fear 
     there will be a ``For Sale'' sign in my front yard and the 
     inexpensive treasures of my life will be divided or 
     discarded.
       I take no comfort in that I am just one of many of this 
     nation's older citizens who once put a strap around our 
     waist, put our hands to the plow and took this great 
     agricultural nation from a horsepowered economy to the 
     richest most plentiful nation in the world who can put a man 
     on the moon at will.
       Must we, the elderly, who helped build this country, have 
     to live to see ourselves stripped of our most prized 
     possessions, our homes, our dignity, our freedom and our 
     pride?
       I know that you and Congress are about to embark on a 
     debate on Social Security and Medicare and other issues that 
     affect those of us who still survive though in our 90's. I 
     hope these debates will go beyond just economics and 
     statistics and look into the faces of those of us who make up 
     this population. We are more than statistics. We all have a 
     story to tell. Once we were all children. Most of us have 
     children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.
       Once you wrote in a letter to my granddaughter Shirley 
     Roney ``I have worked throughout my life to empower people 
     who historically have been excluded from political, economic 
     and educational opportunities. I remain committed to 
     achieving that goal.''
       In that particular letter you were speaking of racial 
     relations. I believe you when you say you have done these 
     things. I hope that in the remaining two years of your 
     presidency, you will be able to finish what you have started 
     in the areas of empowering all people who have been excluded 
     from the opportunities for which our sons fought to guarantee 
     to all Americans.
           God Bless,
     Vaneeta Allen.

                          ____________________