The other shoe

This shoe isn't my mother's. It's about my dad, and the long-awaited visit to the testing psychologist, who was to deliver the dictum about whether he had dementia. We knew when we left the office three weeks ago that there had been some decline in my father's performance on tests of his cognitive functioning, enough for him to feel afraid that he would not be able to ride the Access bus to the Senior Center anymore with my mother and, worse, would be doomed to spiral downward into oblivion, like my mother.
However, things didn't come out quite that way. Though the psychologist's recommendation was that he go only door-to-door in the bus rather than being responsible for guiding himself and my mother to the door several feet away, she said that he did not meet the criteria at this time for dementia, but rather, has only mild cogitive impairment. When she told him this, reading him the entire report, in its very technical terminology, which I am sure he didn't follow, especially since his hearing aids have stopped working and he had only a pair of amplifiers sitting sideways on his ears, he became extremely upset. He took off the amplifiers, which look like headphones, and laid them down on the desk, staring down at his feet, clearly unwilling to listen to her anymore. So unencumbered, he began to speak over her, telling her how well his mind works and how capable he is, at this advanced age.
I felt rather sorry for the psychologist, who was just trying to do her job, after all. And she, in her turn, became more and more concerned about him and about our situation. She asked questions no one had ever bothered to ask before, like would we be able to afford the switch to door to door service, and how many years of funds did we have left before we were out completely, and did we have plans for that time. This last is a subject of great concern to me, so much so that I lose a lot of sleep over it but haven't been able to come to any useful conclusions.
I have researched board and cares that take social security and Veterans' pension only, and I don't like what I see. The place where they live now is beautiful and comfortable. They are used to the caregivers, and vice versa. The food is carefully prepared and good. In some of the cheaper places, residents are not well fed or cared for. The surroundings are shabby, or worse, dirty. Of course, some of the expensive places are that way as well because so many people dump their elderly in them and never bother to visit or check up on how they are doing, whether they are comfortable and experiencing some modicum of happiness.
So I have tried not to think about this or about funeral arrangements, and have instead prayed they would die before the money ran completely out and felt terrible for praying that. In all, it's not something it does me or anyone else any good to think about.
Before I reached this point, I of course asked everyone I knew what we could do when the money ran out, where we could turn. I talked to the rabbi, social workers, the doctor, psychologists and psychiatrists. No one had an answer. Clearly things in this society are extremely screwed up. What will happen to any of us? We better all tackle this issue as a society-- the sooner the better.