A landmark new study paints a dramatic picture of family caregivers: Nearly 44 million adults in the US are providing personal assistance for family members with disabilities or other care needs. That’s more than one out of every six adults. More than 34 million care for frail elders and nearly 4 million help children with disabilities. About 6.5 million care [...]
Federal regulations are finally catching up with a decade of seismic change in the delivery of Medicaid services. More than 650 pages of proposed new rules are aimed at overseeing managed care, which has become the standard health care delivery system for low-income adults and children, and is now being expanded to include both medical care and long-term supports and [...]
For all of its flaws, Medicare and Medicaid’s Nursing Home Compare five-star rating system gives consumers a head-start when searching for a facility. Now, the Kaiser Family Foundation has taken a closer look at the ratings, and reached some interesting conclusions: In a system that rates facilities from 1-5 stars, about one-third have low 1 or 2 star ratings, while [...]
A powerful bipartisan group of U.S. senators wants to improve medical care for older Americans with chronic disease. By doing so, they are taking an important step in improving the health and quality of life of these seniors. But so far at least, they are focusing on only half the problem. While older people with chronic conditions do need improved [...]
In a recent essay in The Washington Post, geriatrician and author Jerald Winakur described the recent hospital experience of his 91-year-old mother. You won’t be surprised to learn it was a nightmare: Poor pain management, overworked staff, insufficient training, little communication among physicians and no communication between his mom and the waves of medical professionals who treated her each day. [...]
Congressional Republicans agreed to a non-binding budget framework yesterday that would slow projected growth of Medicare, but not completely restructure the program as the House GOP wanted. House Republicans tried to use the budget process to fundamentally rewrite Medicare, turning it from an open-ended entitlement program to a model known as premium support. But the move was blocked by Senate [...]
Of all the complex rules that plague fee-for-service Medicare, few are harder to understand and potentially more important for seniors than observation status. By now, many older adults have heard the phrase. But they are still not clear what it means. A new study by AARP sheds some light on the consequences for seniors of hospital observation stays. But they [...]
Over a 12 year period, nearly 6 of every 10 adult children age 51 or older will provide some care for an aging parent or in-law and nearly one in five will help an ailing spouse. And those who do are less likely to work, more likely to see a decline in their financial well-being, and more likely to fall into [...]
I recently returned from a few days at the long-term care insurance industry’s national conference, held this year in Colorado Springs. The organizers asked me to participate in a panel discussion on policy solutions to the challenges of financing long-term supports and services. But I also had an opportunity to listen to what insurance company executives, brokers, and actuaries had [...]
Want to know what’s wrong with the health care system for older adults in the US? It can be summed up in that 10-word response on a physician’s voice mail. One evening last month, I got a panicked call from a friend: She came home from work and discovered that her widowed mother, who has been living with her for [...]