There’s an old political slogan: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” Well, if that’s true, and if Maine residents approve a long-term care ballot initiative on Election Day, families across America may get help paying for vital home care and home care… Continue reading
All the campaign rhetoric leading up to Election Day 2018 next Tuesday is enough to give you a headache. Maybe that’s one reason why high prescription drug prices have become a major concern among older voters for the midterm elections. “This is a pain… Continue reading
The way patients and health care providers think about health care delivery is changing, with an increasing desire to involve patients in decisions and planning. Today, many providers also work to meet patients’ needs that go beyond medical treatments…. Continue reading
(Excerpted with permission of the publisher, Wiley, from Navigating Your Later Years For Dummies by Carol Levine and AARP. Copyright © 2018 by AARP. All rights reserved. Available wherever books and eBooks are sold.) There are eight myths about aging a… Continue reading
She has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and he has early signs of dementia. When a distant cousin stepped in to care for them, the couple had sold most of their furniture to pay for food and collected tin cans to help pay the rent. Realizing that addressi… Continue reading
Two of the most upsetting things for patients are the high cost of health care and the surprise — sometimes indecipherable, sometimes nonstop — hospital bills. But something known as “bundled medical payments” might relieve both of those and possibly p… Continue reading
(This article appeared previously in Kaiser Health News.) Hospice workers would be allowed to destroy patients’ unneeded opioids, reducing the risk that families misuse them, according to one little-noticed provision in the bipartisan opioids bill head… Continue reading
Older voters could be a decisive bloc in the midterm elections, particularly since recent polls have showed registered voters 65+ leaning decisively towards Democratic congressional candidates, a sharp reversal from previous election cycles. An NBC New… Continue reading
Here’s a novel idea to help make hospitals more person-centered: include patients and their families in the key decisions for the medical centers, from strategy to operations. Nutty, right? Well, actually, this is an idea that’s slowly starting to catc… Continue reading
If you are enrolled in Medicare — the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older and some people with disabilities — you will soon have the opportunity to make changes to your health and prescription drug coverage. Medicare’s Fall Open En… Continue reading