On Monday, President Biden announced a deal with 20 Internet service providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, to provide high-speed broadband to low-income households for no more than $30-a-month. That’s less than half the average 2021 cost of $61 and far less in many areas. That initiative, and an even bigger companion program to build out broadband in communities that [...]
By now, you’ve probably heard about the desperate shortage of nurses and aides in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. This workforce crisis not only hurts their residents, it also is creating severe backups in hospitals, putting both patients and the facilities themselves at risk and increasing health care costs. As those staffing shortages course through the entire health care [...]
In an attempt to get a handle on the persistent Covid-19 pandemic, President Biden yesterday issued a broad executive order mandating vaccines for a large segment of the US economy, including most of the medical and long-term care industries. His order should give families comfort that most licensed providers, from doctors to home health aides, will be vaccinated. But it [...]
Many experts have written about the importance of making covid-19 vaccines available to family caregivers of frail older adults and younger people with disabilities. But how can states do this? It turns out to be really complicated. Massachusetts shows what happens when one state decides to vaccinate not only older adults, but also the people who bring them to get [...]
By now, everyone has stories about the Grand Fail of Covid-19 vaccine distribution--especially the inability to even make an appointment for a shot. It has become a process reminiscent of the old Soviet Union: See a line. Get in. There may be something to buy. This mess is especially hazardous to many older adults, who may not have computer skills—or [...]
President Trump’s newest White House pandemic adviser, Scott Atlas, reportedly is advocating for the strategy of building “herd immunity” to stop the spread of coronavirus. Atlas, who is a neuroradiologist and fellow at the Hoover Institution, would allow the virus to spread as widely and quickly as possible to build immunity in the overall population. Think of it as the [...]
The coronavirus pandemic is stressing hospital capacity to its limits, and one way to reduce this pressure it to move patient care downstream. That means keeping as many patients as possible out of the hospital in the first place, and getting those who have been hospitalized discharged as quickly as possible to make room for other, more critical patients. The [...]
OK, let’s get past all the jokes about aging Baby Boomers revisiting their youth and getting stoned. As the medical and recreational use of marijuana grows across the country, older adults are increasingly either smoking cannabis or taking it in the form of cannabidiol (CBD). Yet we know remarkably little about how CBD or its close relative tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) affects [...]
We are living in the age of prescription drugs. They can turn once-fatal diseases into manageable, chronic conditions. But especially for older adults, many of whom take five or more medications each day, they can cause illness or even death. A new study by Judith Garber and Shannon Brownlee of the Lown Institute, estimate that as many as 10 million [...]
The pace of medical spending for older adults is slowing, and one highly-respected health economist gives much of the credit to the increased use of medications that reduce the risk of heart disease. That is good news, but it largely ignores the growing costs of long-term care and the increasing burden on family caregivers, whose assistance is not included in [...]