The Senate Aging Committee held an important hearing today on Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) where the panel's chairman, Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), urged that both state regulators and the CCRCs themselves provide more information about their financial risks to residents, as well as other consumer protections. This is what Kohl said: The fact is that while CCRCs are a good residential option [...]
The other day, I had a long talk with a friend about her mom. My friend lives on the East Coast. Her mother lives in the Midwest. Mom is in an independent living apartment and recently has been falling and suffering memory lapses. The other day, mom got lost trying to drive home from her regular bridge game. My friend realizes it is time for her mother to [...]
Kudos to President Obama for making a "recess appointment" of Don Berwick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Berwick may be the ideal choice for the job. He is the right candidate at exactly the right time. The new health law makes possible broad reforms in the way we deliver health and long-term care. But it by no [...]
We all know how tough it is to be a family caregiver. The physical, financial, and emotional strains have been well documented for years. And those of us who have cared for a family member hardly need research to describe these pressures. But a new study suggests active caregiving, as opposed to the role of passively sitting and waiting for a problem to occur, [...]
Medicaid long-term care is well on its way to destroying state budgets, according to a new study by the international consulting firm Deloitte LLC. By 2030, according to estimates by the firm's Center for Health Solutions, Medicaid long-term care benefits for both home and nursing facility care will absorb a staggering 18 percent of total state budgets if current trends continue. Overall state [...]
Those of us who are caring for our parents or other loved ones know how tough it is. The emotional, physical, and financial burdens are sometimes overwhelming. Bathing your father or changing his adult diaper puts both of you in a new, uncomfortable, and difficult world. But at a Syracuse University long-term care conference I attended last Thursday and Friday, Carol Levine reminded me about the medical expertise caregivers [...]
Nice to see President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius beginning to talk about the CLASS Act--the voluntary national long-term care insurance program that is included in the new health law. But unfortunately, even at a town hall yesterday at a senior center, CLASS was little more than an afterthought for the Administration. Sebelius discussed the new program only in response [...]
For months, physicians have been refusing to take new Medicare patients, and some are now even dropping long-time patients. The problem: Congress's inability to resolve a now 13-year-long argument over how much Medicare should pay docs. The whole mess started in 1997, when the government concluded that Medicare was overpaying many doctors. The reality was that some physicians probably were being paid too much while others were [...]
For the first time since President Bush's ill-fated effort to privatize Social Security five years ago, the future of the nation's flagship retirement program is back on the policy agenda. For example, Social Security will almost certainly be an issue for President Obama's deficit reduction commission. Unfortunately, we may be headed for the same non-productive shouting match we had over the Bush [...]
The Senate Finance Committee has begun an investigation into four big home-health agencies that, it alleges, artificially inceased their home therapy visits to take advantage of higher Medicare billing rates. A May 12 letter from committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and senior Republican Charles Grassley (R-IA) asked the four for-profit agencies--Amedisys, Almost Family Inc. Gentiva Health Services, and LHC Group-- for records and [...]