Great Radio Show, Dr. Berwick! Emerging Rock Star?
Visit the OnPoint website.
National Public Radio’s On Point program with host Tom Ashbrook comes out of WBUR in Boston. The December 6, 2011 program featured Dr. Donald Berwick sharing his thoughts, ideas, and vast knowledge about improving health care — and Dr. Berwick was only a few days past taking leave as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). On the talk show Berwick was articulate, thoughtful, and easy to understand. Moreover, he was unruffled by people who called in to disagree.
Just about everyone who cares about health care quality, solid medicare services for aging parents, and appropriate access to health care for people with lower incomes knows the shameful congressional saga of Dr. Berwick’s rejection.
However, by the end of OnPoint I decided that Dr. Berwick, now that he’s had seventeen months to head CMS, may be a highly visible advocate outside of the government. In fact, the people in the Senate who submitted statement after statement railing about Berwick, quoting his writing out of context, and in general being hateful, may soon wish he were still in the government, quietly going about his daily business with all of the communication constraints of a senior level government official..
They may have unwittingly created a health care rock star.
Great KevinMD Post on Medicare Reform
Stop by the KevinMD blog and read Government Austerity with Medicare Reform as a Top Priority. The blog post, by medical student Nathanael Heckman, addresses the issue of medicare reform and life expectancy.
Raising the age for eligibility is inequitable, because the rich live longer and the poorer Americans need the care that Medicare provides. Heckman provides a nifty and attention-grabbing graph that depicts the differences in life expectancy for men, age 65 who are at the top half and the bottom half of wage earners .
Click on the above link of the thumbnail of the graph to visit the KevinMD blog and read the entire post.
Who Are These People? Health Overhaul Musings
The decision begins on page 16 of the document.
Three cheers for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, that has dismissed cases brought by Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli and Liberty University in my home state, oops commonwealth, of Virginia. Read and listen to the NPR story at the Shots Blog. Read related articles in the New York Times and Washington Post.
Who are these people who make all sorts of claims about the evils of the health overhaul? Do none of these people have a relative who is going without health insurance? Do any of them go to a church that helps the poor or resettles refugees? Has none of them ever lost a job? Doesn’t anyone know someone who got cancer and lost health benefits?
Four recent experiences made me wonder - more intensely – about what prism people are looking through when they consider the world of health care.
New CMS Video on Medicare Preventive Benefits
Check it out.
Read the CMS press release about preventive benefits.
Medicare Trust Fund Projections: What it All Means to Me
Solvency Projections of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, 1970-2011
Older Americans and their adult children can be frightened or at least puzzled by the annual reports of the Medicare Trustees. Each year a report makes financial projections for the fund that pays for senior health care expenses (Medicare). Almost every year some politicians spin dire scenarios about the “certain” near bankruptcy of Medicare. The image at the right illustrates a less certain outcome — showing that annual trustee projections vary widely and are highly unstable over time.
While it’s true that all of us are going to pay more for our Medicare benefits because, no matter what we are paying now, in today’s world most of us live longer and pay in far less than the amount we will use in benefits. (See my post Does Part D Stand for Deficit? that describes how much I am putting in and how much I may get out in benefits.) This graph on the right illustrates that over the last 40 years, annual solvency projections vary widely. From this graphic, plotted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and using 40 years of annual reports, one can conclude that the state of the economy plays a big role in the predictions made by the report.
Redesigned Medicare Caregiver Site: Eldercare Community Resource Locator
A Quick Review of Eldercare Resource Locator
The Eldercare locater link at the bottom of the Medicare Caregiver home page connects to a page where users can search for a broad range of eldercare resources or for connections and contact information for local community organizations. Users can search by zip code or city or for information on a specific caregiving topic. The graphics below can help users focus and navigate to the Eldercare resource page.
Look for the eldercare link (see image at left) at the bottom of the Medicare Caregiver homepage — the first page of the site. Read more »
Redesigned Medicare Caregiver Site: A Graphical Tour
To discover Medicare and caregiving resources, check out the redesigned caregiving website, debuting Tuesday, April 12, 2011. It’s user-friendly and graphically interesting with a focus on easy information access. At the same time updated site promotes learning, sharing, supporting, and collaborating. Adult children, even if they are not providing a huge amount of caregiving support, would be wise to explore the site and then take their senior parents on a Medicare caregiving resource tour.
First page of the new caregiving site.
Ease of use was a mission focus for website developers, and seniors and their families can gain access to all resources with only a few mouse clicks (one of the most important characteristics of good web design). Thus all of the sections are easily accessible, even for a person with modest web browsing skills. Think of the redesigned Medicare caregiver site as a GPS tool, one that quickly leads caregiver families to problem solving information.
The home page of caregiving Medicare site (http://www.medicaregov/caregiver) is eye-catching, engaging, and welcoming to new users. It’s easy to distinguish one section from another and navigate among them. A click can enlarge the print. Links to all of the important caregiving topics are available on this page. Read more »
Medicare Projections: Congressional Budget Office
Read CBO: Seniors Would Pay Much More For Medicare Under Ryan Plan in the Kaiser Health News. A graph using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data depicts the costs to a Medicare beneficiary (what a person will pay) in 2022 and 2030.
In the article Congressman Ryan says, “Washington has been making empty promises to Americans from a government that is going broke,” Ryan said. Unless something is done, “… the red ink is going to destroy our economy.”
Any thoughts?
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and increasingly all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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