The popular Meals on Wheels program has fallen victim to Congress’ clumsy across-the-board spending cuts called sequestration. As a result, local programs are reducing meals deliveries or putting homebound seniors on waiting lists. It is unfortunate that the program is getting cut, especially since its budget has been frozen throughout the Obama Administration. But these cuts may be an opportunity [...]
The Congressional Long-Term Care Commission has selected SCAN Foundation president Bruce A. Chernof as its chair and Mark Warshawsky, director of retirement research at the consulting firm Towers Watson, as Vice Chair. The panel will hold its first meeting on June 27. The commission also quietly replaced one of its members, former Louisiana Secretary of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein. His [...]
The Congressional long-term care commission will finally hold its first meeting in late June. However, the panel must conclude its meetings in the fall and commission members are increasingly pessimistic that they will reach agreement on any substantial reforms to the nation’s troubled system of supports and services for the frail elderly or younger people with disabilities. Last Friday, I [...]
Baby Boomers are in serious denial when it comes to their medical and long-term care costs in retirement. Yes, Medicare provides excellent health insurance (subsidized in large part by taxpayers). But it doesn’t come close to paying for a senior’s medical costs. And doesn’t pay for long-term supports and services at all. Those holes in the Medicare system mean a [...]
What do consumers want to know about assisted living facilities? I was recently asked to participate in a project aimed at answering that question. So, I asked some residents of facilities and their families, as well as people who are considering whether to move in. I thought their questions were interesting, so, I’ll share them and try to provide a [...]
In the past few weeks, no fewer than three highly respected groups have proposed major health care reforms. They all promise greater use of patient-centered integrated care, but none include supports and services for frail elders or younger people with disabilities. It took four decades to incorporate a drug benefit into Medicare. Now we seem to be in the same place [...]
Yesterday morning, a veteran of the decades-long effort to improve the way we deliver and pay for long-term supports and services asked me a question. Why, he wondered, should he believe that recent attempts to reform long-term care could succeed when so many previous initiatives have failed. Last evening, I may have found an answer. My wife and I went to see [...]
There is a widespread belief that seniors, in cahoots with shady lawyers and greedy children, hide their assets so they can receive Medicaid long-term care benefits. It turns out that this image—sort of the greedy geezer equivalent of Cadillac-driving welfare queens—is largely an urban myth. While some seniors undoubtedly find ways to transfer assets (everyone, it seems, knows someone who has—or [...]
You've probably seen the headlines from President Obama’s 2014 budget: He’d slow the growth of Social Security benefits by changing the way payments are increased for inflation, trim Medicare by cutting payments to providers and making high-income retirees pay more out of pocket for their health care, and he’d protect Medicaid from budget cuts. But you may not have seen [...]
California has taken the idea of managed care for low-income seniors and people with disabilities to a whole new level. Under an agreement with the Obama Administration announced last week, the state will begin shifting both medical care and long-term supports and services to managed care companies in just seven months. Watch this closely. You may be looking at the [...]