What’s Behind the Push for National Health Care?
Representative Michelle Bachman (R-MN) exposes the agenda of President Obama and his advisors. Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, Health Policy Advisor to the Administration, admits the need to ration care for the elderly and disabled. Is this what you want for your parents? Your family? Yourself?Labels: disabled, national health care, rationing, seniors
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Medicare Spending Cuts?
The news media has been hyping and whining about the “cuts” in Medicare spending, scaring old people and Gen Sandwichers alike. To hear the media tell it, the sky will surely fall if the President’s budget is enacted.Well, in an article entitled “Washington’s Dishonest Budget Math,” the Cato Institute tells us what really happening. How Washington budgets are really set, and how President Bush’s budget really adds to the actual dollars spent on Medicare and Medicaid, rather than subtracting them.
The article quotes another by the American Enterprise Institute which goes into even more detail on the true budget plans, pointing our that “federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid is set to increase by $84 billion from 2006 to 2008.”
Shame on the media for trying to scare old people over something that isn’t even real!
Labels: budget cuts, Medicare, sandwich generation, seniors
Friday, February 16, 2007
Thieves Target Medicare Beneficiaries
A news service in South Florida is reporting scammers calling Medicare recipients. The telemarketers insist that the seniors need new “verification card numbers” from Medicare. The callers then ask them to disclose their checking account information.According to complaints received by Medicare, the bank account numbers are used to withdraw money from their accounts electronically.I've seen this report from other localities, so it behooves all of us to remind our parents to be on the alert and never give personal or financial information over the phone.
Labels: Medicare, scams, seniors, telemarketers
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
50 Questions for Seniors to Ask Before They Move
Lisa Dunn in Real Sage Advice lists 50 questions seniors (or their Gen Sandwich offspring) should ask before making a move. Good questions and worth considering.Not that they would have made a difference to my parents. We knew it was time for them to move when my 82-year-old mom was climbing up onto the roof to sweep the leaves and lugging the garbage down a 45-degree angle driveway in the rain. We needed to get them onto flat ground and into a place requiring less maintenance. My step dad was already mostly blind by then, so most of the maintenance fell to Mom. And I was worried about a real fall.
We talked to them about moving to a senior mobile home complex for about a year. They didn’t want to move, but realized the time was coming. One day I got a call asking if I’d come up and look with them. I asked if we were just looking or buying. Just looking. So we drove up and met with their realtor and looked at several mobile homes. None of them were quite “it.”
I suggested that we also look at assisted living while we were there. We went to the one place they knew of—a multi-story rather ugly monolith filled with walkers and wheel chairs and old people. We saw someone they knew, who invited us in to see her little two-room apartment. I could see my step dad emotionally shutting down. We left, went back to the house and agreed to keep looking. Hubby and I drove home, expecting to come back again in a few weeks.
The next day I got a call. Dad had made an offer on one of the places we had looked at. It was the cleanest and most attractive, but also the darkest. And only two bedrooms. Not perfect, but it’s been home for almost three years now.
A year or so after the move, they finally stopped blaming me for making them move, and finally began to consider this as home. Most of the time.
Labels: aging parents, housing, moving, seniors
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Daily call helps keep seniors healthy
Here’s a new twist on keeping track of your parents. A high-tech Wayzata, MN company called Warm Health is using automated phone contact to help seniors stay healthy and independent in their own homes, while giving their adult baby-boomer children an online glimpse of how their elderly folks are faring.According to an article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune.com,
it's not quite Nanny-cam for seniors. But as 22 million American families provide some level of care for elderly relatives, the computerized calls are an innovative soft monitor for concerned baby boomers who often live in other cities and find themselves overstretched, juggling jobs and caring for teens, but with aging parents who want to be independent.
The daily four-minute Warm Health phone calls begin with a spiritual or nostalgic message--the senior gets to choose--and conclude with health tips and health questions. The seniors' recorded responses to those questions appear on the Warm Health website, accessible for designated family members to view and hear. The calls are one small answer in addressing the isolation and loneliness that can erode seniors' health. They also address the problem of seniors forgetting to take medications, the major cause of an estimated 125,000 drug-related deaths a year among elderly Americans.
For this holiday season Warm Health is providing a free 30-day trial to provide a lift for your loved one. The monthly fee after that is $34.95/mo.
What do you think? I’m not sure my mom would delight in receiving a computerized call every day. A nuisance, she’d say. But for those who are more home bound, it might be an option.
Labels: aging parents, long distance care giving, seniors