Nah...you'll become a Zombie Blogger.

"Living in this grave yard used to mean something!  Now we're overrun by the fully dead and they just lie there...they don't take care of their crypts or anything.  I tell ya, this place...it's almost like it's a dystopian shit hole!  And if that fucker in the next grave over doesn't stop trying to sell me insurance, I'm really gonna get cranky!"

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

If you absolutely have to put someone you love in a home, I'd actually suggest using your nose as a guide.

My girlfriend worked up an ad campaign for a nursing home,  and in the course of her research, that was the number one piece of advice she found.

Why is this?

The NHS model presupposes that people are stupid and know nothing about health care. It is very similar to a low-rent HMO plan in the states.  Every request for health care must go through a GP (who is kind of like a doctor, except the qualification here is to have a bachelors degree rather than a master).

So lets say you pull a muscle in your back and now can't walk. In the states you could (with a good health plan) make an appointment directly with a physiotherapist and get sorted out. In the UK you have to go to the GP first who then approves you for an appointment with the physiotherapist (not in the same building or even the same area). Skin Rash and want to see a dermatologist? Same deal. Everything must first go through the GP who will then refer you to the appropriate specialist. The GP however doesn't actually DO anything other than look stuff up in their computer -- the amount of time spent at the GP waiting to be merely referred to someone who is elsewhere is colossal.

Now say you recently got diagnosed with cancer. When you go to the GP, the GP will consult her computer and says 'your cancer would best be treated with drug X which is the standard medication given by the NHS'. If you say 'well I've read research that drug Y would be better for me and has 25% better effectiveness than drug X', their response will be you can't have drug Y -- its not approved by the NHS because its too expensive.

Oh and if you go out on your own and see a doctor who prescribes you drug Y? Well then you have to pay 100% of all your prior NHS care. For basic healthcare the NHS is the bees knees, but the moment you want something which is  non-standard, or want to apply your own knowledge to your health, things go all squirrely.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

My wife and I are in a care-giver position right now, with her parents.  It's damned stressful, more on her than on me, I'd say, but still stressful.  I can easily understand the decision to put a parent who needs 24-hour care into a nursing home, even though we have decided not to take that route.

When a parent needs 24-hour care, are you going to give up your career until they die?

I agree that there are lots of people who want, or who at some future date will want both to be cared for and to be independent, but it is a paradoxical desire.  To be independent means not to depend upon others, and if you need to be cared for by others, you depend upon them. Still, we would all like to be as independent as it is possible for us to be, given our circumstances.  When you depend upon others, very often the result is unfortunate.  It would be a great understatement to note that others often do not meet our needs as well as we would like them to.  The only person I really trust is myself.  

Now that boomers themselves are reaching that age, generally healthier and more well off than their parents I'd suspect the economics of the industry to change greatly.

This is a good point.  I also wonder if there's anything to the anecdotal accounts that Gen X & Gen Y folks are living longer with their parents before moving out, and also generally have a better relationship with their parents.  If that's true, perhaps they'll also be more willing to take care of their parents in their old age?

self-centered baby boomer generation that hated their parents

    Had much experience with Alzheimer's patients? Or Parkinsons disease?

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras