P.A. MacLean, November 12, 2008
Faulty product price comparisons on Medicare coverage may only be the beginning of the difficulties in helping an elderly parent cope with Part D prescription decisions. The program allows insurers to decide what drugs they will and won’t cover and a look at reactions on email lists and blogs shows that companies may try to push patients to switch to cheaper generic drugs, even after they have been on name brands and the generic equivalent may disagree with them. But price comparisons remain the gateway problem for most people. Using a government site that doesn’t include some of the cheaper options is no way to help consumers. Take look at what Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in June during the opening of a hearing into Medicare Part D: "What we discovered is that the taxpayers are paying far more for drugs under Medicare Part D than they do under Medicaid. In effect, Medicare Part D has given the major drug companies a taxpayer-funded windfall worth billions of dollars..."
P.A. MacLean, November 7, 2008
When my husband puts the measuring spoons in the knife drawer I wonder if he has early stage Alzheimer's. When I do it, I'm just forgetful, or distracted. No one wants to think they have the mind-wasting disease. It doesn't help to know that the brain starts slowing down after 40.So getting a baseline test on National Memory Screening Day, to establish how well you're doing, may not be a bad idea. We just have to remember to do it. Now I take to mind tricks, like counting the number of items I carry on a plane, or into a restaurant, so I'll come out with the same number, repeating three over in my head to recall the purse, coat and umbrella. Forgetting neighbors' names, that's a bad one. I've found asking them to repeat it and saying over and over a half-dozen times in my head helps, but it always means I miss the first part of what they're saying. Wish I could remember how I did this when I was 20.
P.A. MacLean, October 27, 2008
During a stroll down the clothing aisle of a Target store, a woman easily in her 50s was overheard to tell her husband, “For $150,000 I could have a lifetime supply of clothes from Target.” This was not free retailer advertising but political commentary on Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate. whose recent $150,000 clothes-shopping spree, paid for by the GOP, have been as popular as Sen. John Edwards $400 haircut. Sarah's threads may unravel her appeal to women. Sarah, selected as the GOP affirmative action hire to appeal to women, appears to be losing a chunk of those very voters. She's been slipping in popularity among women for the past month and has tried to talk more about women's concerns - then came the $150,000 wardrobe news. As illustrated by the political pundit in Target, it's not just the clothes. Women aren't that shallow. It is the contrast of her Republican-clothes bailout versus the market slide most American women are seeing in the value of their wardrobes.
P.A. MacLean, September 21, 2008
Taking over financial management for an elderly parent, along with their health care decisions, for over 20 years as I did produces days of feeling lost and overwhelmed simply by the bureaucracy of the task. For years it was seat-of-the-pants learning by calling here, there and everywhere for answers. These days things are changing and the Marin Senior Consultation Clinic provides an example of groups that are pulling together volunteer experts in one place to answer wide ranging questions in one-on-one clinics. Help on legal questions, senior housing, long-term care, adult day services and home care are among the services at the one-day clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area. For $30, the consultants will address specific questions. There are no speeches, no presentations, just volunteers with expertise in a range of senior specialties offering to help. Whether you want to know how to get time off from a parent with Alzheimer's or how to address moving and downsizing to a parent or planning long-term care options, programs like this make a big difference. Let's hope the idea spreads nationwide.
Jennifer Meacham, September 12, 2008
This just in: A new AARP report, "More to Give," concludes that tens of millions of baby boomers and members of the silent generation “appear ready to increase their civic participation in retirement.” Hey! We already knew that. The report comes at the heels of IBM's pledge to contribute $250 million in services to charities/nonprofit groups through its "corporate version of the Peace Corps" and President Bush's call for "volunteering because our country needs you." Indeed, the US is in dire need of volunteers to pick up where the government has left off: training the next generation in financial management skills, helping communities help themselves through entrepreneurship, and so many other business-tied initiatives. Take boomer Clay McAllester, who developed a financial/life education board game for grade schoolers with the help of the Service Corp of Retired Executives. It's too bad we have to pick up the pieces, but then again, someone has to.
P.A. MacLean, August 28, 2008
People over 55 are filing for bankruptcy at an alarming rate. In many cases, that's due to a health crisis. But these days there are other reasons, notably the home foreclosure crisis. Just look at the newly released numbers for federal bankruptcies. For the year that ended in June, the number of bankruptcies in nine Western states shot up by 60 percent from the year before. Those states include California, Nevada and Arizona, which were among the areas hardest hit by foreclosures. Across the nation, bankruptcies of all types were up 29 percent for the same period, from 751,000 in fiscal 2007 to 968,000 in 2008, according to the administrative office of the courts. Many of the cases are Chapter 7 - liquidation bankruptcies that require selling off assets to pay bills - rather than reorganization under what's known as Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Chapter 7 liquidations were up nearly 37 percent, while Chapter 13, which allows wage earners to reorganize and have some debts forgiven, grew 17 percent. If you look at bankruptcy filings by population size, particularly liquidation filings, some rust belt state like Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio are at the top of the list. What does this mean? It means older workers laid-off from jobs, losing health care coverage and borrowing against the value of their homes are losing everything they worked for.
P.A. MacLean, August 16, 2008
The light media coverage of Olympic bicycling time trials means lots of people may have missed the story of American Kristin Armstrong, who won the gold medal in the women’s time trial. The more interesting aspect of her win is that Armstrong, who is 34, overcame osteoarthritis to do it. While the mention of arthritis may conjure images of frail, gray-haired seniors with twisted hands, it strikes the young as well. There are 8.7 million people 18-44 with arthritis, but figure jumps to 20.5 million for boomers, ages 45-64, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Armstrong’s feat points out the importance of exercise and weight control in managing the disease. For older adults with knee osteoarthritis even moderate exercise, three times a week can cut the risk of arthritis-related disability by 47 percent, the CDC says. And while 16 percent of adults at a normal weight report arthritis, a whopping 66% of adults with doctor-diagnosed arthritis are overweight. Losing as little as 11 pounds reduces the risk of developing knee osteoarthritis among women by half, according to the CDC. So the message to boomers, use it or lose it.
P.A. MacLean, August 5, 2008
Stories abound about the politics of President Bush's trip to the Olympics, but many women of a certain age will remember the difficulty for women athletes to get into sports. It was 35 years ago, in 1972, that Congress and President Nixon created Title IX, a landmark law that banned discrimination based on sex in athletics and education. Before Title IX, schools routinely imposed strict limits on admission of women and sports scholarships were rare. Title IX has revolutionized women's sports competition in the last 35 years. Look at the Olympics today to consider how much things have changed. The women's 800 meters was held in 1928, then banned and declared unsafe from women until 1956. The next time it was run was 1960. In 1984, after years of struggle to get a woman's marathon in the Olympics, American Joan Benoit became the first woman to win the Olympic women's marathon event in Los Angeles. In the US women's marathon time trials this year, 98 women finished in under 2:50, an astoundingly large field. It is second only to the 109 women who qualified with sub-2:50 times in the first women's trials in 1984. In Beijing, watch Dara Torres, at 41, the oldest woman swimmer in the games. But she is not the oldest woman ever to compete. That honor belongs to 70-year-old British equestrian Lorna Johnson in 1972.
P.A. MacLean, December 22, 2007
Nothing tugs at the heart more than seeing seniors in assisted living apartments or nursing homes without family visitors at the holidays. And it happens a lot. Talk to the staff at any center and you'll get a dose of the sad reality, that even when family members live nearby, many rarely visit. That's why gifts from your heart make such sense. If the elder in your family, or a friend, can't communicate well, don't ask them questions. Instead, tell them about your life and what's been going on. It's the mundane chores of daily life that will be the most enjoyable: what book you're reading, what you've baked, or what repairs you made on the house. Tell your parents how your job is going, or the latest about friends they might remember. If they can get out, take them for a ride to see city lights or just go to a coffee shop for a donut and java. If you don't live close by, maybe you can have meal together at a local restaurant. If they can't get out, bring a magazine they might enjoy, share a book you've read or bring a favorite candy bar, if that's on the diet. You only need to stay a couple hours. It brings a smile for days and eases the loneliness that comes from being disconnected from familiar faces. Just don't wait months before going again.
P.A. MacLean, October 25, 2007
Errors in medical bills may have larger ramifications than you realize. Many insurers include lifetime maximum payments for coverage. The faster you use them up, the quicker you run out of healthcare coverage. This can be significant for elderly parents who may rely on a secondary insurance to fill in with coverage on top of Medicare. Employers began limiting the health coverage of retirees in some industries as the number of retired workers swelled and costs skyrocketed. Beyond your parents, consider your own medical bills and whether you are eating into a lifetime maximum coverage. If your bills have errors, you may pay for it twice, first in the overbilling and second by using up your lifetime maximum years earlier than you expected. Find out your lifetime coverage limits, then monitor your bills.
P.A. MacLean, October 31, 2007
While popular media may be tying every heat wave, caving glacier, drought and severe storm to global warming, the true effects may be far more incremental.Still, we should know the potential health risks of a warming planet to allow the years it may take to prepare for them. But that’s not what America’s disease monitoring entity, the Centers for Disease Control, was allowed to do. Instead, it’s report on the health effects of global warming was “evicerated." The report had been intended to show how global warming might affect the spread of highly contagious diseases. Couple this with another health issue, like rationing flu vaccines to some groups of people in times of severe flu pandemic, and you can see the need for broad public discussion of how to respond to much more serious health risks tagged to global warming.
P.A. MacLean, March 27, 2007
If it takes a 940-page, 12-pound book to tell you how bad habitats for migratory birds have gotten around the world, you might as well hit yourself in the head with the tome. Things are pretty bad around the world in preserving areas for migratory birds, as The AP recently reported. But local governments can straighten up and fly right. San Francisco Bay has lost roughly 97 percent of its tidal wetlands due to development, but since 1999 nearly 11,500 acres have been restored, according to the National Estuarine Research Reserve System. And recovery of another 25,000 acres is in the works. If you want to know more about what you can do to restore an ecosystem near you, it just so happens the second National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration kicks off April 23-27 in Kansas City, Missouri. Check it out.
