Medicaid, which funds more long-term care supports and services than any other payer--$115 billion in 2008--is about to crash. Like a head-on train wreck, we can see it coming. The question is: What are we going to do about it? The Kaiser Family Foundation, in an extensive new survey of all 50 state Medicaid programs, tells the grim story. Medicaid is [...]
In an important new study, Lynne P. Snyder and Christopher Baker show the importance of energy assistance for elders living at home. The paper, Affordable Home Energy and Health: Making the Connections, was published by AARP. It is another example of why it is not enough for states to provide Medicaid waiver programs to help people receive long-term care at home. Without additional [...]
Among the great challenges we all face as we age is where to live. We may be a bit too frail to stay in our suburban colonial, but are not nearly ready for assisted living, to say nothing of a nursing home. We could move to a traditional large retirement community such as a Leisure World, but that would mean moving to a [...]
Instead of admitting patients, hospitals are increasingly keeping them under "observation status." This decision results in lower Medicare payments to the hospitals and more out-of- pocket costs for patients. But it also means that Medicare is no longer paying for some admissions to nursing homes, and is instead shifting those expenses to residents and their families. What's going on? It is complicated. But here is [...]
I spent yesterday with more than a hundred elder care professionals at the Seven Acres senior care campus in Houston. For a while they listened to me, but for much of the time I had the opportunity to listen to them. And what I heard was striking, and an important addition to the HSC Foundation's recently published study based on listening to family caregivers. We [...]