Open enrollment for 2019 continues for several more weeks, until December 7th, and if you’re like many you may have been putting off making some important decisions concerning your health coverage. Last week, in order to help our radio listeners and readers be better informed, we presented this AgingOptions blog article describing the advantages (and…
In the arena of medical care, there are times when good intentions produce bad outcomes. That was our reaction when we read this important article published recently on the Kaiser Health News website. It’s called “‘Fear Of Falling’: How Hospitals Do Even More Harm By Keeping Patients In Bed,” and the premise is straightforward: in…
It’s an all too common scenario: an elderly loved one on Medicare is hospitalized, and the family expects the stay to last a certain length of time. Then suddenly, with little or no warning – and often days earlier than anticipated – the hospital tells the surprised family that the discharge date has been moved…
Those who work with Medicare and related issues on a daily basis, like the staff at AgingOptions, tend to assume everyone has a solid, basic understanding of our nation’s complex health care system for retirees. But then open enrollment comes around – the period between October 15th and December 7th when beneficiaries can make penalty-free…
For years, scientists have been searching for a definitive test to predict whether someone is likely to develop dementia, but results have been inconclusive. However, now a newly-published study suggests that researchers may have found an important clue, in an unlikely source. The question is, do people want to be tested – and once diagnosed…
There are a number of important occurrences associated with the month of October. It’s the start of Medicare open enrollment. It’s the climactic month of the baseball playoffs. And it’s traditionally the month when every neighborhood pharmacy puts out the signs saying, “Flu Shots Available Here.” Yes, October marks the start of what is usually…
Medicare open enrollment begins this coming week, on October 15th. It’s your annual opportunity to reexamine your plan and see what’s changed – and decide if there’s a better way to meet your health care needs. During this important “open season” which continues through December 7th, we’ll do our best here on the AgingOptions blog…
Here at AgingOptions, as we walk people through the LifePlanning process, one of the issues we tackle is the question of housing. The great majority of seniors are firmly convinced that the ideal housing choice for them is the place they’re living today: surveys conducted by AARP show that nearly 90 percent of adults 65…
Just about everybody knows that dying without a will can cause serious problems for your loved ones. Here at AgingOptions, we are frequently asked about this topic, and as you can imagine, we have some strong opinions which we’ll discuss in a moment. First, though, we were drawn to this recent article by Liz Weston…
Last year, we discovered a highly disturbing article on the website HealthDay that put an ominous spin on the recent chorus of headlines about the nation’s opioid crisis. According to two government reports released in 2018, a growing number of seniors are falling prey to this insidious category of highly addictive painkillers. Because this problem…