News
Spring 2003
Chicago Memorial Association Newsletter
An affiliate of the Funeral Consumers Alliance
Annual Membership Meeting
Date: Monday, May 5, 2003
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm (The first half-hour is informal, a chance to chat with board members and purchase literature at cost.)
New location: Grace Place, 1st floor, 637 S. Dearborn. Grace Place is 2 blocks from the State and Harrison “L” stop. A parking lot is adjacent.
Speaker: Dr. Kathy Johnson Neely
Subject: Palliative Care/Hospice
About the Speaker
Dr. Neely is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University. She is currently with Season Hospice and served for 12 years as Associate Medical Director of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital hospice program. She is currently chair of that hospital’s ethics committee.
Palliative Care/Hospice
Palliative care/hospice care or “comfort care” offers a compassionate way of dealing with physical and psychological pain for patients near life’s end. When cure is no longer possible, the physician attempts to use the best of modern medicine to alleviate symptoms and to provide the best possible last days for terminally ill patients
Hospice/palliative care in the US is not a place, but a system of care through 3000 plus programs for patients at home and in nursing homes. Unlike Europe and Canada, there are very few free standing US hospice facilities that allow unrestricted long term care until death. Although originally developed for end-state cancer care, any patient with a life expectancy of 6 months or less from any cause is hospice eligible. Hands-on 24/7 care is provided by the family, coached through a hospice nurse, and supplemented by visits from social workers and others. Home visits by hospice physicians are available as well. After death, grief support is offered to the families.
Hospice history begins in England. Cicely Saunders, a British social worker and nurse, was compelled by her conversations with a terminally ill patient to advocate for the dying. The movement spread throughout Britain and Canada in the 1970’s. In 1986 Congress passed the Hospice Health Care Benefit Act, which continues to underwrite hospice care for Medicare recipients and informs most Medicaid and private insurers’ provisions for end-of-life care.
Not only has the Palliative Care/Hospice movement affected end of life care, it has also begun to inform curative medicine. Initiatives for pain control of all patients has become a hospital priority. Honest, compassionate conversations with patients facing life-threatening illness have become the rule rather than the exception.
The palliative care /hospice movement continues to be guided by Dame Cicely Saunders’s words, “You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but to live until you die.”
Your Organization, Your Role
The annual meeting is the time when new board members are elected. Board members serve staggered three-year terms, so there are vacancies each year. You could fill one of them.
The board meets 8-10 times a year at a central location. No special skills or knowledge are required, just a willingness to learn and participate. Call 773-327-4604 to find out about joining the board or other opportunities to help.
Let Us Know
We can’t keep contact with you if we don’t know where you are. Continue to call our information number 773-327-4604, or email chicmem@hotmail.com with changes to your membership information. If you leave a message, please spell your last name and give a phone number where we may reach you if necessary.
Choices
Though approximately 90% of our members choose cremation, we can also help those who choose burial. Consult our web site, www.funerals.org/chicago or call 773-327-4604. Through the Anatomical Gift Society we can also assist in arranging the donation of a body for scientific use.
Planning Forms
Almost half of our members have never sent us their Registration and Planning Forms, indicating their wishes for cremation or burial. These forms plus your personal communication to those close to you are the best way of making sure your wishes are carried out. Do you have a completed form in your home? Do those who are likely to be responsible at the time of your death know where it is? Have you made copies of the forms for them? Have you sent one copy to us? If you need new forms or new wallet -sized membership cards, call 773-327-4604.
New Address & Phone for the Funeral Consumers Alliance
The Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) has a new address: 33 Patchen Road, South Burlington, VT 55402. Their toll free number 1-800-765-0107 remains the same, as does the address of their informative web site, www.funerals.org Consult the FCA to find out if there is an organization similar to the CMA in a city where you have family or where you vacation. Thank you
As a result of our appeal for donations we received 74 contributions totaling more than $2,500 in 2002. If you itemize your tax return, it is important to remember that contributions to the CMA are not tax-deductible.
Why We Continue to Ask
Even with 2002’s increased new membership and greatly increased small contributions, we did not break even and had to dip into cash reserves from large bequests and donations given to us the past.
New memberships and donations in 2002 brought in $5,863. However, our expenses were $8,798, including the purchase of a necessary new computer. Our estimated budget for 2003 is $8,000. We hope to meet it without tapping into our reserves. .
We are an extremely frugal organization. At present, we have no paid staff. We depend on volunteer work by the board and others for office work and other tasks. Money goes for printing and mailing newsletters, phone and other office expenses.
We are not unique. Many of the other 120 affiliates of the Funeral Consumers Alliance find that the traditional one-time membership fee no longer meets their costs, especially if they keep up with members through newsletters information phoness, and website. Many depend, as we do, on appeals for contributions from members.
Give, if you can and wish to. Remember that you are already a member with full membership privileges whether or not you contribute. Your contribution is entirely voluntary.
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Mail to: Chicago Memorial Association P.O. Box 2923, Chicago IL 60690
Name______________________________
Address____________________________
City_______________Zip_____________
Phone________________Amount______
Send me____membership brochures to give to my friends and to organizations I belong to.
I intend to remember the CMA in my will. ___
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From our Winter 2003 issue:
Winter 2003
Chicago Memorial Association Newsletter
An affiliate of the Funeral Consumers Alliance
New board, new officers
At its June meeting, the Board of Directors elected Janice Atsaves president. Janice brings 21 years of statutory statistical and financial reporting, and 11 years of data analysis experience to our organization. She has also worked to set up a health centered non-profit organization. Other officers are: William Counts, Vice President; Sallyann Garner, Treasurer; and Joan Schroeter, Recording Secretary. Also serving on the Board are: Sean M. Cusack, Reverend William Jones, Sr., Myrna Knepler, William Eugene Kyle, Irwin Marks, Joan Piowaty, and Arlene Wilson. Alternates are: Dan Lynch and Dorothy Mayer
Price Change
Our cooperating funeral home, Rago Bros, has increased its minimum cost for cremation from $435 to $500. This minimum applies to deaths that take place in a city hospital. Prices for cremation in the metro area, but outside the city, or in a non-hospital setting in the city range up to $635. The price for direct burial (pick-up of the body, filing of necessary paperwork, and transportation to the cemetery in a simple coffin)remains at $650. The price for a simple funeral, with two hours viewing in the provider's facility on the northwest side of Chicago, remains at $1,900. To our knowledge these are the lowest prices available.
For those who choose burial, be aware that cemetery costs must be added in, and the CMA does not have the resources to offer specific help with cemetery arrangements. We can give some general advice-shop carefully and keep the following in mind: 1) Burial plots that are purchased ahead of time are often difficult to sell if people move or change their minds. If sold they often return less than their purchase price. 2) When discussing burial arrangements with cemetery personnel, be sure to check on their requirements for an outer container (vault). Most cemeteries require a vault to protect against uneven settling of the ground. However they are not required by law, and you should shy away from anyone who tells you so. If a vault is required, chose a simple concrete one, the most efficient and the cheapest. It can be purchased either from a funeral director, a
cemetery or independently. Remember that no coffin or vault has the power to preserve a body although it is not hard to find advertisements in Chicago papers that imply that power.
Taking Charge
If you have joined the CMA, the quality and cost of your final arrangements are important to you. Yet it appears that many members do not take the necessary steps to see that their wishes are actually carried out. Are you one of these people?
Have you filled out planning forms that state your wishes? Do you know where they are? Have you told those who are likely to be responsible at the time of your death of their location or given them a copy?
Although we ask you to return a back-up copy to us, the most important copies are obviously the ones you keep in your house, and with those close to you. The CMA will not know of your death until informed by others Unless you specify otherwise, we will make an additional copy of the form you return to us for our cooperating funeral home.
For many of us the decision of whom to tell of our plans is easy-- a spouse, a child, a sibling, a close friend who is likely to know of our passing, and can be trusted to carry out our wishes once we have made those wishes clear. Others may need to seek out someone less close but reliable. If you are concerned about funding your arrangements, money can be put aside either in a joint checking account or a pay on death (POD) Certificate of Deposit, available at your bank. The CD may be the most suitable if the person to whom you have entrusted your arrangements is a professional or a relative stranger.
If you need new planning forms or membership cards, call our information number 773-327-4604.
Who regulates funeral homes and cemeteries?
Most laws regulating funeral homes and cemeteries are developed and enforced at the state level. Illinois, like many other states, has recently strengthened its laws regulating both funeral homes and cemeteries. The State Comptroller's office now provides literature and a hotline for consumer questions and complaints. Their toll free number is 877-203-3401.
At the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers some protection to the consumer of funeral and cemetery services through its funeral rule. It is this rule that mandates that funeral homes give customers a detailed written price list for services. However, the FTC has little power of enforcement and many critics believe it has not used the powers it has. A move to strengthen the FTC's capabilities is likely to be introduced in Congress shortly.
Even with what seems to be an increased effort at regulation and enforcement, there is no way laws can protect consumers against such legal but widespread practices as overselling funeral merchandise and services to grieving next of kin Some variation on "Your relative deserves the best …" is still all too common. Only knowledge, planning, and good communication with likely survivors can prevent your family from paying for services neither you nor they really want.
Did you know?
In recent years from 15-20% of funeral homes and cemeteries in the United States have been bought out by large corporations. These funeral homes and cemeteries may appear to be independent, and advertise under the name of the original owner, or under an attractive and innocuous alternative name. In the Chicago area the largest of the corporate owners, Service Corporation International, advertises its more than twenty Chicago area facilities under the name of "Dignity". Another corporate group, active in the Chicago area and elsewhere, is Alderwoods, formerly Loewen.
How your contributions help
Because you have responded to our previous request for contributions, we have raised over $4,300 in the first eight months of 2003. However, we need to continue that level of support or increase it in order to keep the organization financially healthy this year and in 2004. Our budget is small, largely because of the contributions in time from members and others If you can give, please do. If you gave last year or the year before, please consider an additional gift.
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Mail to: Chicago Memorial Association, P.O. Box 2923, Chicago, IL 60690.
Name______________________________
Address____________________________
City____________Zip________________
Phone_____________Amount $________
Send me ____ membership brochures to give to my friends.