Voters in Washington State have decided to keep the state’s first-in-the-nation public long term care insurance program. On Tuesday, they easily rejected a ballot initiative that would have killed the far-reaching law. The WA Cares law provides up to $36,500 in long-term care insurance benefits, with the amount increasing with inflation. It is funded with a payroll tax surcharge of [...]
For decades, the desperate need for government to help support middle-income frail older adults, younger people with disabilities, and their family members has been clear. Until now, lawmakers largely have done nothing about it. But that finally may be changing. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President, has proposed an ambitious expansion of traditional Medicare that would, for [...]
What role do family members play in caring for frail older adults and younger people with disabilities? What can society do to make it easier for them? I got thinking about this when Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance suggested that families could lower their daycare costs if “grandma and grandpa” took on more child care responsibility. Who Is Caring [...]
One of the many lessons we should have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic is the cost to older adults of loneliness and social isolation. While nearly 900,000 older adults died from the virus, tens of thousands were sickened and may have died from the isolation the pandemic caused. But what have we learned from that tragic experience? Whether older adults [...]
Too often, physicians are reluctant to give patients a diagnosis of dementia, even when cognitive testing shows memory loss or other symptoms. And when doctors do provide a candid diagnosis, they may send their patients and their families home without any guidance for what to do next. No practical advice. No sense of hope. And too often, not even any [...]
The federal agency that operates Medicare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), is finally recognizing what families have known for, well, thousands of years: Family members are the bedrock of the system of care for frail older adults and younger people with disabilities. And the agency is taking some important steps to help them. Some proposals will provide [...]
Living with memory loss and other cognitive limitations is hard. But when you can’t remember or can’t process information well enough to make important decisions, and you have no one by your side to support you, life can be extra tough. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco ((UCSF) estimate that about 4.3 million older adults with cognitive impairment [...]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted final approval to the anti-Alzheimer’s drug lecanamab, marked as Leqembi by drugmakers Eisai and Biogen. Here is what you need to know: What does it do? In a formal phase 3 trial, Leqembi was shown to slow the progression of memory loss and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease by [...]
Enormous attention is being given to controversial drugs aimed at slowing the progression of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, a very different set of clinical innovations holds the promise of helping far more people living with dementia and their families in more immediate—and perhaps more effective—ways. These care delivery models are aimed at breaking down the often-impenetrable barriers between health care [...]
The sponsors of the House Republican debt limit bill, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, say its goal is to encourage low-income people to work. But it may have exactly the opposite effect, especially for people with disabilities. And, at the same time, it may throw family caregivers into an impossible situation—having to choose between caring for their loved ones or [...]