HGleckman

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So far Howard Gleckman has created 705 blog entries.

Do Nursing Homes Low-Ball Profit Reports To Get Higher Government Payments?

Do nursing home owners understate the profits they report to federal regulators by shifting income to related businesses? Two academic experts in nursing home finance found that in one state 63 percent of margins are hidden this way. To put it another way, only 37 percent of true nursing home profits are reported to federal regulators. A new paper by [...]

By |2024-03-18T11:12:09-04:00March 18th, 2024|nursing homes|0 Comments

Biden’s Budget Would Hike Medicare Taxes, Boost Medicaid Home-Based Long-Term Care

President Biden’s 2025 budget proposal, which will double as his presidential campaign platform, includes major proposals aimed at supporting older adults. It would raise taxes to help fund Medicare, increase federal support for Medicaid home-based care,, create a federal family leave program for those caring for older adults as well as children, and toughen regulation and inspections of nursing homes. [...]

By |2024-03-12T09:55:41-04:00March 12th, 2024|Joe Biden|0 Comments

The US Health System Should Focus on Pre-Acute Care Not Post-Acute

The US health system focuses an enormous amount of money and attention on post-acute care—the medical treatment patients receive after they have been discharged from a hospital. But it would more cost effective, and far better for patients, to refocus on what you might call pre-acute care: What the US can do to prevent those hospitalizations in the first place. [...]

By |2024-03-05T15:36:34-05:00March 5th, 2024|Health Care|0 Comments

Social Security Benefits Seem To Be Increasing, But Are They Really?

In response to the recent burst of inflation, the government increased Social Security benefits significantly in the past two years. But compared to average pre-retirement income, net benefits have been falling for decades. And the trend will continue. One big reason: Rapidly rising Medicare premiums that usually are deducted directly from Social Security checks. Think about Social Security benefits in [...]

By |2024-02-27T16:06:20-05:00February 27th, 2024|Social Security|0 Comments

Voters To Decide On Washington State’s Public Long-Term Care Insurance Program

Washington voters will decide the fate of the state’s path-breaking public long-term care insurance program in a referendum this Fall. If adopted, Initiative 2124 would make participation in the Washington Cares program voluntary, effectively killing it. The effort, largely bankrolled by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood and backed by prominent state Republicans, is the latest attempt by conservatives to dismantle [...]

By |2024-02-21T10:08:40-05:00February 21st, 2024|long-term care insurance|0 Comments

Changing The Way Doctors Talk To Patients About Dementia

Too often, physicians are reluctant to give patients a diagnosis of dementia, even when cognitive testing shows memory loss or other symptoms. And when doctors do provide a candid diagnosis, they may send their patients and their families home without any guidance for what to do next. No practical advice. No sense of hope. And too often, not even any [...]

By |2024-02-13T16:04:34-05:00February 12th, 2024|dementia, Uncategorized|0 Comments

Family Caregiving Is Tough On Workers. What Are Employers Doing About It?

Caring for a chronically ill parent, spouse, or other relative is hard. And, without support, it can seriously interfere with paid jobs, disrupting not only employees’ lives but their workplaces as well. There are lots of good reasons for firms to assist workers who are caring for loved ones. Unfortunately, many don’t make the effort, perhaps because they are worried [...]

By |2024-01-26T10:26:31-05:00January 26th, 2024|family caregivers|0 Comments

Medicare Will Pay For A Common Alzheimer’s Test But It May Not Be Reliable

Last year, Medicare decided it would routinely pay for sophisticated imaging tests for Alzheimer’s disease called amyloid-PET (positron emission tomography) scans. The move will make it easier for people with early-stage memory loss to get tested and potentially become eligible for a class of new drugs that aim to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. However, many neuroscientists and imaging experts [...]

By |2024-01-09T15:09:53-05:00January 9th, 2024|dementia|0 Comments

Barring Immigrant Care Workers Punishes Frail Seniors And Their Families

Congress is debating whether to impose new restrictions on immigration as the price of a deal to provide new aid to Ukraine and Israel. But some of the biggest victims of this misguided policy will be frail older adults, younger people living with disabilities, and their families. For their sakes, Congress should make immigration easier, not harder, for the nurses [...]

By |2024-01-03T09:42:20-05:00January 3rd, 2024|long-term care workers|0 Comments

Retirement Savings Are Growing, But Not For Everyone

There is a seemingly endless debate about whether Americans have sufficient savings for retirement (see here and here). The answer is that many do. But tens of millions do not. Overall retirement assets have grown enormously in recent years-- to $36 trillion, despite a terrible stock market in 2022. But looking at total retirement plan savings, or even average 401(k) [...]

By |2023-12-14T10:20:19-05:00December 14th, 2023|Aging|0 Comments