Politics have roughed up most of our attitudes towards health reform. Sometimes it is difficult to sort out what has changed, what seems to be improvement or expansion or cut in service or cost. As the reforms of 2010 move through the courts, we all might need ever greater concentration to keep an eye under […]
#Aging: Caregiving For Parents So Common Most Do Not Report It
Caregiving among younger people as their Boomer parents move toward retirement is so common that they do not even consider it caregiving. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) considers any fairly regular activity, like taking a parent to the doctor or over-the-counter testing for blood sugars, as part of their ‘Caregiver’ category, though the […]
#Aging: Resources For Issues Concerning Older Americans
Numerous resources are available online and in print for information about elder care, aging, homes for older Americans, etc. We would like simply to touch on a few that we think are quite valuable, and which we hope you will as well. We would love to hear from you if you have some favorites that […]
#Aging: Medicare On The Chopping Block Of Debt ‘Compromise’
As most of us raise a sigh of relief that the debt ceiling was raised and a vague compromise to trim $1.2 trillion of the national debt was reached, we should not assume that all government spending will be trimmed equally. The social safety net weaved by Social Security and Medicare remains the most conspicuous […]
#Aging: Likely Further Medicare Cuts Hurt Stocks Of Numerous Care Companies
While the ‘compromise’ over the debt ceiling was being shouted over, many analysts noted that the world’s stock markets were, at most, simply unnerved. They were not panicked because investors were confident that some kind of deal would be found and default was not really going to happen. What kind of deal drawn up to […]
#Aging: Medicare’s Support To Home Health Agencies Likely To Be Cut 3+%
With government cuts (or default) looming, everyone is talking about cuts. The battle is really over how much cutting will be done, and who will bleed most. The two federal programs that are most often discussed as targets for cutting are Social Security and Medicare. And every political stripe agrees that as the growing number […]
#Aging: Upcoming Movie Documents The Revolution Of Growing Older
From the people who brought us the Civil Rights Movement and Haight-Ashbury, draft-dodging and fuel-efficient draft airplanes comes a new movement meant to revolutionize the ways we think about aging. The Baby Boomers have never really moved gently from one stage of life to another, so we should not be surprised to discover that they […]
#Aging: $450 Billion in Unpaid Care Another Likely Drag On Economy
Without getting into the biological, religious, sociological… arguments of ‘why’, the fact is all human societies encourage, expect, even need families to support each other in ways that might appear contrary to self-interest. Parents want to keep their kids in school into their early 20s, for example, even though their counterparts a century often sent […]