“Retirees, Adult Children Disagree on Retirement Community Essentials,” by Marlene Satter, ThinkAdvisor “Factors important to the seniors, who were 75 and older, weren’t always high on the priority list for their kids, and vice versa. Cost was a primary factor, with 61% citing it; then came security/safety (51%) and access to health care (46%). But cost was more important to seniors, at 64%, than to their children, at 58%; security and safety was less important, at 44%, compared with the kids at 57%; and the kids were far more concerned about access to health care, at 56%, than their parents,
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“Average State Medicare Advantage Plan Costs for 2019,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Here’s a look at average Medicare Advantage plan amounts by state for 2019. … To create these averages, we started with the big file of 2019 Medicare Advantage plan information that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services posted last week. The file, the 2019 MA Landscape Source Files spreadsheet, is available here.” LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform): Click through to the article for access to the raw data, the computed averages and caveats about the analysis. #goldencareagent #medicare
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“The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care,” by Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker “The large central room of the memory-care unit was designed to look like an old-fashioned American town square. There was a small fountain, surrounded by plants and a low stone wall; there were a couple of lampposts, and benches, tables, and chairs set about. The carpet was mottled with darker and lighter shades of green, to resemble grass growing and bending in different directions. Along the walls were the façades of what looked like clapboard houses, with wooden shutters and shingled pitched roofs and porches that extended into
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“What A Medicare Advantage Personal Care Benefit Looks Like,” by Howard Gleckman, Forbes “Earlier this year, Congress and the Trump Administration for the first time allowed Medicare Advantage plans to offer their members non-medical supportive services such as transportation and home meals. As insurers begin to roll out their plans for Medicare’s 2019 open season enrollment, we are starting to see what these new benefits are going to look like. … For their part, the plans will learn the answers to two fundamental questions: How much will adding these services cost, and do consumers want to buy them?” LTC Comment
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“Without Safety Net Of Kids Or Spouse, ‘Elder Orphans’ Need Fearless Fallback Plan,” by Judith Graham, Kaiser Health News “Planning for challenges that can arise with advancing age is essential for people who go it alone, advised Sara Zeff Geber, a retirement coach and author of ‘Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers: A Retirement and Aging Roadmap for Single and Childless Adults.’ A good way to start is to think about things that adult children do for older parents and consider how you’re going to do all of that yourself or with outside assistance, she said. In her book, Geber
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“Nursing homes can treat higher acuity patients without raising their risk of death: Study,” by Marty Stempniak, McKnight’s LTC News “Skilled nursing facilities can safely take on higher levels of care for their residents to avoid the hospital, and they can do so without raising residents’ risk of death. That’s according to a new study by the RTI International research firm, published in October’s Health Affairs. Researchers there took a closer look at providers involved in the federal government’s Initiative to Reduce Avoidable Hospitalizations among nursing home residents, which ended in 2016. They found that not only did the effort
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“Half of women ‘will develop dementia or Parkinson’s or have a stroke’,” by Sarah Bosely, The Guardian “One in two women will develop dementia or Parkinson’s disease, or have a stroke, in their lifetime, new research suggests. About a third of men aged 45 and half of women of the same age are likely to go on to be diagnosed with one of the conditions, according to a study of more than 12,000 people. The researchers, from the University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, said preventive measures could “substantially” reduce the burden of the illnesses. The findings have been
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“Medicare Advantage Premiums to Decrease by 6% in 2019,” by Thomas Beaton, HealthPayerIntelligence “CMS officially announced a six-percent decrease in Medicare Advantage premiums in 2019 as the result of MA enrollment, health plan options, and benefits increase. All signs point to the MA marketplace continuing to be a lucrative market for payers. CMS stated that the average 2019 MA premium will decrease from $29.81 to $28.00 and improve health plan affordability for most beneficiaries. Eighty-three percent of MA enrollees are expected to have either the same or a lower premium in 2019. CMS estimates that 46 percent of MA beneficiaries in
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“In the Nursing Home, Empty Beds and Quiet Halls,” by Paula Span, New York Times “The most recent quarterly survey from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care reported that nearly one nursing home bed in five now goes unused. Occupancy has reached 81.7 percent, the lowest level since the research organization began tracking this data in 2011, when it was nearly 87 percent. … Given an aging population, you’d think nursing homes would be coping with the opposite problem — surging demand for their services.” LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):
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“5 Things to Know About New York Life’s New LTCI Policy,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Here’s a look at possible answers to five questions about the NYL My Cares policy a financial professional’s clients might have about the policy, drawn from the New York Life LTCI  team’s written comments.” LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform): Interesting details on the new policy. #goldencareagent #LTCI
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