Another cost to be considered, which is touched upon in the article, is the personal cost to the related caregivers. I moved countries to be the caregiver to my mother who has dementia and it is horrible. That is not in my character and I hate that stuff.

She absolutely will not move into assisted living, or even a condo, and the only reason I can live with her is that she thinks she is doing me a favor allowing me to live here,

It is horrible. I am trying to learn to increase my patience as she is a very smart, capable, accomplished woman who is not the person she once was but refuses to admit it and is belligerent if there is any hint of that. She can not tell me a story about what happened ten minutes ago so she regresses into repeatedly telling me stories about what happened 50 years ago. She can not shop or cook anymore so I make all her food, I take pride in my cooking and if anything is not A+ and I say anything about it she says "Did I ever tell you what my Dad used to say? It's better than nothing.". Yeah you did. About a hundred times.

It is really a pain in the ass and incredibly stressful. She wiped my ass and thankfully it has not reached that point literally but essentially already I am wiping hers. Unfortunately she is incredibly defiant and will not admit that she needs help. She had a few nurses come in three times a week and I made the mistake of letting her see me look at their notes in which they said she needed full time care and her memory was essentially non-existent. She is a very mild mannered person but threw the paper across the room and called the nurses stupid which was so out of character. ugh