If you or a loved one needs long-term care, where you live matters…a lot. A new report by AARP shows wide variation in the quality of supports and services among states—whether delivered at home or in a nursing facility. While it found important improvements across states, it also identified significant shortcomings, even in the highest-rated states. The best states to [...]
You probably know by now that last week’s snap election was a disaster for UK Prime Minister Theresa May and her Conservative Party. But you may not know that one issue that cost the Tories their strong parliamentary majority was a proposal that came to be known as the “dementia tax.” It is a story that has some important lessons [...]
The Trump Administration believes that caring for babies is so important that employers should give their parents up to six weeks of paid leave. It apparently doesn’t believe it is as important, or as disruptive to work life, to care for aging parents or other relatives in need of personal assistance. That, at least, is the message it is sending [...]
Americans age 40 and older continued to be flummoxed by the challenges of long-term care financing, but increasingly believe that Medicare ought to provide such supports and services. According to a new poll by the Associated Press-University of Chicago NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP-NORC), support for a Medicare long-term care benefit has grown significantly over the past five [...]
The best that can be said about President Trump’s 2018 budget and older adults: It could have been worse. In a fiscal plan focused on historic domestic spending cuts, programs for older adults were hit by substantial reductions, though not slashed as deeply as other domestic programs. Medicare was largely untouched. So was Social Security for seniors, although Trump would [...]
The House-passed health bill could further batter the already-beaten down market for long-term care insurance. And drive even more middle income seniors into impoverishment and onto Medicaid long-term care. Here’s why: The House bill, called the American Health Care Act (AHCA) would significantly raise health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs for buyers aged 50-64. And that is exactly the [...]
Congress and President Trump took dead aim at seniors and younger people with disabilities this week. First, Congress voted to cut or freeze funding for key federal senior service programs. Then the House passed its bill to replace the Affordable Care Act—a measure that would make health insurance unaffordable for many people aged 50-64, allow insurance companies to sell policies [...]
Congressional Republicans seem once again stymied in their efforts to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” So here is a partial solution that can be a winner for both political parties, the insurance industry, and consumers: Allow people 55-64 to buy into Medicare. And enhance the deal by letting Medicare Advantage plans offer some long-term supports and services, such as personal care, [...]
Older adults are among the biggest victims of our often disorganized, uncoordinated, and impersonal system of medical care. Backwards financial incentives encourage useless tests and dangerous hospital admissions and discourage important social support, personal assistance, and preventive care. The result is that Medicare pays hundreds of billions of dollars for treatment that not only fails to improve the quality of [...]
About four in 10 family caregivers are men—sons, husbands, brothers, sons-in-law, or neighbors. We are nearly always ignored in discussions about caregiving, lost in the stereotype of the family caregiver as a 40-something daughter. Finally, AARP is shining a much-needed spotlight on these men. A new study by Jean Accius at AARP’s Public Policy Institute paints a valuable, and rare, [...]