Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Only $2,000 of a $7,000 dementia month in New Orleans pays for care
Angela Davis, 65, told Business Insider that she keeps working partly to get a few hours away from caring for her 87-year-old mother, and that the household spends upward of $7,000 a month, most of it on the house.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Angela Davis, 65, told Business Insider that her 87-year-old mother, diagnosed with dementia in February 2024, lives with her in New Orleans and that at-home care runs upward of $7,000 a month.
- Davis said her mother brings in $3,200 a month, and that in the end her mother pays 60% of the cost while she pays 40%.
- Her mother spent about two weeks in hospital with services that were extremely limited because she had stopped paying her Medicare premium.
- Her mother walked a block from the house and fell, and a neighbour's call brought an ambulance that cost $4,000.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost A facility would have billed the overnight cover. Here Davis provides it, sleeping on a loveseat downstairs at 65, and the $7,000 monthly total counts none of that labour.
- constraint A missed insurance premium limited what a two-week hospital stay could provide. Whoever takes over an ageing parent's paperwork is also setting how much care will be available later.
- exposure One fall and one ambulance came to $4,000, or two months of the household's care spending, so the real exposure sits in single events.
- contradiction The 60/40 split Davis describes implies her mother covers $4,200 of the $7,000, about $1,000 above the $3,200 income the essay reports, so anyone using this household as a template should treat the division as unexplained.
Home care in this household costs about what the facility asked for. Davis said the facility told her her mother needed services she had not needed when she was dropped off, and was willing to provide them if Davis paid $2,000 more [7]. She brought her mother home. Paid help did not hold either: Davis said the last caregiver was really good, but her mother did not want her there anymore [22]. Her own care line now runs about $2,000 a month [5], and the $500 a week she is giving her mother's godchild comes to roughly $2,170 a month [8][2].
The $7,000 in the essay's introduction is presented as at-home care [2]. Davis's own itemisation is about $2,000 a month of care and about $5,000 of upkeep on the house, which she lists as electricity, taxes, insurance, alarms and her mother's car [5]. The two add to $7,000, which makes upkeep about 71% of the figure [1].
The supervision runs day and night. In the past three months her mother has rolled paper up and lit it because she has been craving nicotine, and Davis took the knobs off the gas stoves [18]. Davis said her mother's condition is worsening, that she is not taking in much food, will not get out of bed, and is up all throughout the night [19]. Earlier, her mother told people Davis was trying to steal her house and her money and changed the locks, which Davis discovered when they could not reach each other for three days [10].
The essay is thin evidence about a workforce. Davis is an only child [13], retired from school social work, and owns more than a dozen rental homes [14]. She said she has "two dogs, two jobs, and a mom with dementia who is depressed on a regular basis" [15], that she continues to work partly for her own mental well-being [21], and that "The money is not going to make or break me, but it never hurts to have more" [16]. This is one household, and the essay leaves prevalence an open question. On what the working hours do for her, Davis said: "It gets me out of the house and takes me out of caregiving for a few hours" [17].
What to watch
- Whether reporting on caregiving costs separates care spending from property upkeep; the $7,000 figure here mixes the two.
- Whether the mother's Medicare standing is restored, and what a next hospital admission would then cover.
- Prevalence data on employees doing overnight dementia care; a single as-told-to essay cannot establish how common it is.