Working Too Hard For a Good Death: Has Competitive Dying Become A Thing?
We Americans love to compete. We bet in March Madness office pools on who will win the annual college basketball championship. We pay a pretty penny for the best manicured lawn in the neighborhood or...
View ArticleMedicare For All Has Nothing To Do With Medicare. Call It Something Else
This week’s second round of debates among Democratic presidential hopefuls is producing a (mostly healthy) conversation about health insurance. But for normal people, much of the argument is enormously...
View ArticleHow Providing Social Supports And Care Coordination May Lower Medical Costs...
What if real estate developers worked with on-site nurses and social workers to help frail older adults and younger people with disabilities stay in their apartments? Could they deliver–in a...
View ArticleHow Frail Elders Will Pay For Trump’s New Anti-Immigrant Rules
The Trump Administration has adopted tough new rules aimed at barring low-wage workers from coming to the US. Direct care workers such as personal care aides, home health aides, and certified nursing...
View ArticleAre We Nearing The End Of Medicare’s Three-Day Rule That Makes Patients Pay...
President Trump’s Medicare chief, Seema Verma, may have signaled the beginning of the end of Medicare’s three-day rule—the requirement that Medicare will pay for post-acute care or rehabilitation in a...
View ArticleInterest Grows In Social Insurance For Long-Term Care. But What Should It...
Federal and state policymakers increasingly are interested in creating a public social insurance program for long-term care in the US. Even some Democratic presidential hopefuls have raised the issue,...
View ArticlePsychedelics and Seniors: Can Drugs Such As Marijuana and Psilocybin Improve...
OK, let’s get past all the jokes about aging Baby Boomers revisiting their youth and getting stoned. As the medical and recreational use of marijuana grows across the country, older adults are...
View ArticleUrging Doctors and Health Systems To Recognize The Importance Of Social...
The influential National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) has called for a major initiative to better integrate heath care and social supports. The group, formerly known as the...
View ArticleMedicare Advantage Plans Are Expanding Personal Supports and Services For 2020
In 2020, Medicare beneficiaries will have more opportunities to join Medicare Advantage (MA) managed care plans that offer limited personal supports and services such as home care, non-medical...
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A Shortage Of Paid Caregivers Is Raising The Cost Of Home Care
The growing shortage of paid caregivers has become increasingly apparent over the past several months. Now, we are seeing evidence of the most direct consequence of that scarcity: The cost of care,...
View ArticleThe Special Challenges Of Nearly 11 Million Seniors Who Live In Rural...
When we think about older adults in the US, we usually focus on those living in cities or suburbs. By doing so, we forget about the rural elderly, who represent an outsized share of people living in...
View ArticleEven If You Have Medicare, You’ll Still Pay Thousands Out-Of-Pocket For...
One of the biggest misconceptions seniors have about health care is this: I have Medicare so don’t need to worry about medical costs in old age. It is a dangerous mistake. Not only does traditional...
View ArticlePolicymakers Still Are Not Paying Attention To The Needs Of Frail Elders And...
Nearly all of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have proposed or supported plans to create a federal family leave program that would include those who are caring for frail parents or other...
View ArticleButtigieg Proposes An Ambitious—And Much Needed— Long-Term Care Reform Plan
Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg has proposed an ambitious plan to reform long-term care finance and delivery in the US. It includes a public catastrophic long-term care benefit,...
View ArticleThe House Democrats’ Far-Reaching Medicare Drug Bill Is About More Than...
Timed to show that they are not just about impeaching President Trump, House Democrats released a far-reaching plan to redesign the Medicare drug benefit. But the measure, which the House plans to vote...
View ArticleHow To Master Growing Old
Growing old is not easy. And it also is not simple. There is a lot of learn about how you can care for your changing body, how to keep and grow social connections, and how to manage your legal and...
View ArticleThe 2020s Will Be A Tipping Point For Elder Care In The US
As 2020 dawns, the US is about to reach a critical, historic tipping point in its need to care for frail older adults. And we are tragically unprepared. In just five years, the first of the 77-million...
View ArticleWhy Won’t Congress Ease Medicare Enrollment For Those Not Yet Taking Social...
You are turning 65. But– like 40 percent of other 65-year-olds– you have not yet claimed your Social Security benefits. For many older adults, that choice makes good financial sense. Except for one...
View ArticleCompassion Isn’t Enough For Family Caregivers. They Need Training Too.
Family members and friends are the bedrock of our system of personal care for frail older adults and younger people with disabilities. Without their support, the nation’s hospitals and nursing homes...
View ArticleHow The Democratic Presidential Candidates Would Address Long-Term Care
All the major Democratic presidential hopefuls have proposed significant plans to support those receiving long-term supports and services and their families. While this amount of attention to long-term...
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