Aging
Who Will Care for the Elderly and Disabled?
Advocates of including long-term care services in health reform usually focus on two issues: How many Medicaid dollars should be spent on home care and whether to create a national long-term care insurance program, such as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has proposed in his CLASS Act. But neither of those reforms would mean much without […]
Get Medicaid Out Of The Long-Term Care Business
Medicaid, a 1960s-era program that was supposed to provide health care for poor women and kids, has become the biggest single payer of long-term care services-more than $100 billion annually, or 43 percent of all home care and nursing facility costs. Supporters insist that Medicaid is a valuable safety net for the poorest elderly and […]
Doctors Providing End of Life Counseling See Benefit in Current Controversy
The paragraphs, buried deep in the 1,000-page House health reform bill, appear innocuous, but they have ignited a firestorm among critics predicting government-sponsored euthanasia. The controversy, over proposed Medicare funding of end-of-life counseling, has come to epitomize some of people’s deepest fears about the government’s role in health care. Yet physicians who work with patients on end-of-life […]
What The House Health Bill Says About End-Of-Life Care
The furious controversy over Medicare payments for end-of-life care counseling stems from Section 1233 in the health bill passed by three House committees. Related Article Doctors Providing End of Life Counseling See Benefit in Current Controversy That language would amend the Social Security Act, which also governs Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled. […]
The Last Taboo
We live in a time when seemingly no subject is taboo. People discuss, in excruciating detail, their weight, sex lives, and bank accounts on reality TV. Kids tweet about their dates-in real time. And we happily blog away on our latest medical diagnosis. It is apparently no longer possible to have Too Much Information. Yet, […]
Why Seniors are Health Reform Winners, Not Losers
Opponents of health reform have targeted seniors with a blunt message: You will be big losers if “Obama-care” is enacted. In the words of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele: “Senior citizens will pay a steeper price and will have their treatment options reduced or rationed.” Scary words. But, in truth, seniors are likely to […]
Democrats Are Not The Real Threat To Medicare
Republicans have a message for America’s senior citizens: President Barack Obama and the Democrats want to take away your health care. And if the polls are right, America’s seniors believe it. For a while now, people over 65 have been skeptical about Democratic reforms. Although the skepticism reflects some broader political feelings–seniors have always been […]
Will Long-Term Care Be Included In Health Reform?
President Obama may have jump-started health reform with his speech to Congress last Wednesday but, sadly, he ignored the need to repair our tattered system of long-term care. He said nothing about improving ways to finance this critical personal assistance, nothing about making Medicaid benefits more accessible to the frail elderly and those with disabilities […]
The Predicament of Near-Seniors And Health Reform
As we approach the legislative endgame, liberals worry that health reform has become so watered-down that it accomplishes too little. Conservatives worry that health reform has become so costly that it does too much. What’s the reality? The challenges facing one group of Americans highlight what this year’s health reform is likely accomplish, and what […]
The Death of Nursing Homes
Elders often tell their adult kids to shoot them rather than send them off to the nursing home. We may not be disposing of our parents, but we are killing the nursing homes, at least as we know them. In not too many years, long-term care nursing home beds may be as rare as Republicans […]