For more information contact Banerjee & Associates

Fifty years ago, Medicare and Medicaid became the latest and greatest entitlement signed into law. Lyndon B. Johnson did the honors July 30, 1965, with past Democrat president Harry S Truman sitting next to him.

The new law was part of Johnson’s “Great Society” plan, which was a continuation of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” It was meant to be another safety net for seniors and other Americans who would need medical care later in life.

It is a significant milestone to have a government program remain operational 50 years later. But with such longevity, the question is then begged, as times have changed:

What will become of this program over the next 50 years?

That discussion has been a hot topic among conservatives and Republicans in regards to saving not only Medicare and Medicaid, but also to Social Security. While those programs were signed into law by Democrat presidents, Republicans have seemed to be the ones fighting to see that the government “upholds its promises to the nation’s seniors.”

With all the talk over the last several years, backed up by various studies and analyses about the programs, there have been suggestions that Medicare and Medicaid may be completely broke as early as 2025 if nothing is done to reform the structure of the system. But there are others who say that sustainability has already been addressed with the Affordable Care Act – though it reportedly took $700 billion from Medicare to pay for the bill.

In some ways, it is serendipitous that these programs have managed to be around for 50 years in the first place. But can the government continue to fulfill promises moving forward as the population ages and there are fewer workers paying into the system but more former workers taking out of the system?

What should be done, if anything has been a source of much debate? And the New York Times, in “celebrating” 50 years of Medicare, opened up its debate and opinion pages to several perspectives about Medicare and its future. While it seems there is general agreement that Medicare will look different in the next 50 years than it was in the last 50 years, there is strong debate as to how the program will change. From discussions about structural reform or developing a single-payer healthcare system (“Medicaid for all,” as it has been deemed), to cutting benefits, raising taxes and having benefits means-tested – there are plenty of options and plenty of areas of discussion and disagreement.

Whichever way you come down, there is one thing that is certain – you can’t be certain about it, so you need to be prepared for alternatives. Before you are near the age of being qualified for Medicare or Medicaid, it would be a good idea to include this topic in your discussion about estate planning with a local certified elder law attorney. He or she can sit down with you and discuss not only your general estate plan to get all your affairs in order, but can also help you understand Medicaid, its uncertain figure and how you can create some certainty for yourself and your family.

When you don’t know how much longer you’ll live, you can’t count on something unreliable. You need a rock to lean on, and your estate plan can be that rock – whether it includes Medicare or not.

The post The Future of Medicare and Medicaid 50 Years from Now appeared first on The Elder Care Firm.

Fifty years ago, Medicare and Medicaid became the latest and greatest entitlement signed into law. Lyndon B. Johnson did the honors July 30, 1965, with past Democrat president Harry S Truman sitting next to him.

The new law was part of Johnson’s “Great Society” plan, which was a continuation of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” It was meant to be another safety net for seniors and other Americans who would need medical care later in life.

It is a significant milestone to have a government program remain operational 50 years later. But with such longevity, the question is then begged, as times have changed:

What will become of this program over the next 50 years?

That discussion has been a hot topic among conservatives and Republicans in regards to saving not only Medicare and Medicaid, but also to Social Security. While those programs were signed into law by Democrat presidents, Republicans have seemed to be the ones fighting to see that the government “upholds its promises to the nation’s seniors.”

With all the talk over the last several years, backed up by various studies and analyses about the programs, there have been suggestions that Medicare and Medicaid may be completely broke as early as 2025 if nothing is done to reform the structure of the system. But there are others who say that sustainability has already been addressed with the Affordable Care Act – though it reportedly took $700 billion from Medicare to pay for the bill.

In some ways, it is serendipitous that these programs have managed to be around for 50 years in the first place. But can the government continue to fulfill promises moving forward as the population ages and there are fewer workers paying into the system but more former workers taking out of the system?

What should be done, if anything has been a source of much debate? And the New York Times, in “celebrating” 50 years of Medicare, opened up its debate and opinion pages to several perspectives about Medicare and its future. While it seems there is general agreement that Medicare will look different in the next 50 years than it was in the last 50 years, there is strong debate as to how the program will change. From discussions about structural reform or developing a single-payer healthcare system (“Medicaid for all,” as it has been deemed), to cutting benefits, raising taxes and having benefits means-tested – there are plenty of options and plenty of areas of discussion and disagreement.

Whichever way you come down, there is one thing that is certain – you can’t be certain about it, so you need to be prepared for alternatives. Before you are near the age of being qualified for Medicare or Medicaid, it would be a good idea to include this topic in your discussion about estate planning with a local certified elder law attorney. He or she can sit down with you and discuss not only your general estate plan to get all your affairs in order, but can also help you understand Medicaid, its uncertain figure and how you can create some certainty for yourself and your family.

When you don’t know how much longer you’ll live, you can’t count on something unreliable. You need a rock to lean on, and your estate plan can be that rock – whether it includes Medicare or not.

The post The Future of Medicare and Medicaid 50 Years from Now appeared first on The Elder Care Firm.

One of the biggest frustrations of people with head injuries is that even though they look normal to their friends and family members, something is off.  Now, a new study involving professional baseball players provides a strong example of how people are impaired even though they look (and even feel) normal.

The study, reported in the American Journal of Sports Medicine and summarized in the New York Times, followed Major League Baseball position players (non-pitchers) who returned to action following concussions.  What the researchers found was stunning.  These batters, even though they themselves felt they were no longer impaired, performed significantly worse in the weeks following their return to play.

The study looked at 66 players over several years who had concussions.  In the two weeks before their concussions, they players had an average batting average of .249, an on-base percentage of .315, and a slugging percentage of .393.  For the two weeks after their return from the injury, the batting average had dropped to .227, on-base percentage had fallen to .287, and slugging percentage had fallen to .347.

Despite these players feeling that they were fine and back to normal, their batting averages and on-base percentages had each fallen by almost 9%, and their slugging percentages had fallen by almost 12%.

In order to rule out the idea that the drop off was just from the players being away from the game, the researchers also studied players who had taken a similar amount of time off for bereavement or paternity leave.  For those players, the batting averages, on-base average, and slugging percentages all INCREASED after their breaks.

This study is strong evidence for two things:

1) even though victims of brain injuries may appear normal to the outside world, they may still be impaired; and

2) that victims of concussions and head injuries are likely impaired in all types of ways for far longer than even the injured persons suspect.

Today, health care providers are asking themselves if recognizing the problem is enough. Do doctors have a duty to identify and provide support to individual caregivers who may be suffering?

Studies have shown how intervention can improve health and well-being in caregivers. But most medical professionals do not make it a common practice to identify and intervene in cases of caregiver burden. As Baby Boomers age and the number of caregivers swells, some in the medical community are reconsidering how the caregiver burden is handled.

Recently, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article on caregiver burdens that encourages doctors treating a patient to proactively assess whether a caregiver in the situation might benefit from support or medical attention. Not only could the caregiver benefit, but the original patient might end up receiving better care as well.

The JAMA article alerts doctors to the risk factors for caregivers who might be suffering, and it gives doctors concrete steps to take when they suspect that a caregiver might be suffering undue physical or emotional hardship. The process begins with a series of questions that identify problems that may be occurring. Treatments can range from support groups to individual therapy to medication.

Pioneers of Elder Law – For over 30 years, Gilfix & La Poll Associates LLP has innovated creative legal solutions to help you manage and plan the future of your estate.
To contact a special needs planning lawyer visit http://www.gilfix.com/ or call 800.244.9424.

Reporter Jan Hoffman tells the story of 96-year-old Eryetha Mayberry, an Oklahoma City nursing home resident with dementia. Mayberry’s daughter, Doris Racher, noticed that a few of her mother’s belongings had gone missing from her room at the nursing home. She thought it might be another resident with dementia who often wandered into Mayberry’s room.

Racher bought a tiny hidden camera disguised as an alarm clock and placed it on her mother’s nightstand. No further thefts occurred for some weeks, and Racher nearly forgot about the camera. But she eventually decided to go through the recordings anyway. What she saw shocked her.

A nursing home aide was seen stuffing latex gloves into Mayberry’s mouth while another teased her, tapping on her head and laughing at her. They hoisted her from her wheelchair and flung her on the bed, whereupon one gave her rough chest compressions, Hoffman reports. Mayberry died soon after.

In the wake of that incident, on November 1, 2012, Oklahoma became the third state – following Texas and New Mexico – to explicitly allow residents in long-term care facilities to place surveillance cameras in their rooms. In the past two years, lawmakers in at least five states have proposed similar laws.

Most such efforts have been stymied by concerns of privacy rights raised by employee unions and facility owners, but families of residents nevertheless are using the so-called “granny cams” in increasing numbers.

Even government agencies are using them. The New York state attorney general’s office has used the cameras for years in patient neglect and abuse cases. The office recently demonstrated its methods to investigators from other states at a national conference.

In June, 2012, Ohio state attorney general Mike DeWine announced that cameras had been placed in residents’ rooms – with permission from their families – at unspecified facilities throughout the state. DeWine has since moved to shutter a facility in Zanesville, where he says cameras caught an aide repeatedly leaving food beside a resident who was completely unable to feed himself.

But surveillance raises legal and ethical questions. For instance, residents often have roommates, who have the right not to be monitored. Maryland law says cameras must be fixed and pointed directly at the intended resident. Facilities that permit cameras often require families who use them to post a notice to that effect on the resident’s door.

A family’s decision to place a camera in their loved one’s room must be weighed carefully, but in all cases, families should watch carefully for signs of abuse.

If you need to speak with a Tampa nursing home abuse lawyer, Call Joyce & Reyes at 1.888.771.1529 or visit more of http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/.

In 2002, there were well under $2 billion in the sales of prescription stimulants. In 2012, such sales approached $8.5 billion.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 15% of high school students now have this diagnosis and that the number of children on such medications has increased from 600,000 in 1990 to 3.5 million currently.

What is perhaps most striking is the loosened definition of ADHD. A child may be diagnosed if, for example, she “makes careless mistakes” or “often has difficulty waiting his or her turn.”

This means that there is a similarly striking increase in the number of children who are diagnosed with this disability and have a right to an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP).

The cost to school districts is enormous. They must pay for aides, special services, and sometimes private tuition in a specialized school if the mainstream educational system is not able to handle a severely disabled child. As a result, there are fewer resources for those who are most severely disabled.

If given a choice, every parent would choose a course of action that will allow a child to perform brilliantly.

One doctor who has published prolifically on this point, told Reuters Health: “If a child is brilliant but is doing just okay in school, that child may need treatment, which would result in their performing brilliantly at school.” The New York Times article quotes Dr. Joseph Biederman, a “prominent child psychiatrist at Harvard University in Massachusetts General Hospital.” Dr. Biederman’s research has been substantially funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

Today one in seven children is diagnosed with ADHD by the age of 18. Because the medical literature and pharmaceutical information indicates that one never graduates from this condition, it is a life long diagnosis.

The article points out that the drug industry is now targeting adults.

In 2012, the article points out that almost sixteen million prescriptions for ADHD medication were written for individuals between ages 20 and 39. This is triple the amount from just five years before.

Impact on Public Benefits, Social Services

The excellent and very lengthy New York Times article did not identify or explore the impact on our public benefits and social services systems. With an explosive growth in diagnoses, there has not been a comparable growth in funding for needed support services. The impact on income programs – SSDI and SSI – has not been explored. Yet, the impact is profound. Millions of adults are now receiving or seeking “disability” status so that they can receive government income benefits and Medicaid and/or Medicare as their health insurance programs. This places enormous fiscal strains on such income and health programs. Again, those who are severely and, some would say, legitimately disabled are now sharing limited resources with a dramatically expanded pool of public benefits recipients. The bottom line is that they receive fewer services and, inevitably, lower quality services.

To understand how loose, all inclusive, and arguably inappropriate this is, look at the New York Times article and take the online test that asks “whether you could have ADHD, too.” They reprint a web page of drug marketer Shire and its quiz that, in effect, encourages adults to believe they have or might have ADHD. The New York Times conducted a poll of 1,106 Americans. Almost half had a result of “ADHD possible” or “ADHD may be likely.”

The quiz asks, for example, “How often to you fidget or squirm your hands or feet while you have to sit down for a long time?” It asks, “When you have a task that requires a lot of thought, how often do avoid or delay getting started?” The other four questions identify behaviors that, arguably, the vast majority of us have on a daily basis.

I took the test. I scored 14, which means “ADHD may be likely.” I wonder what would have happened if, when I was in high school, I was given this test. Would I have been medicated? Would I have been as successful?

There is no doubt that millions of Americans have conditions that can be helpfully addressed by sport, counseling, and sometimes pharmaceutical assistance. The inescapable conclusion of the article – a conclusion reinforced by my experience – is that the pharmaceutical industry has been far too successful in generating millions of additional ADHD diagnoses. All of us are harmed as a result.

Pioneers of Elder Law – For over 30 years, Gilfix & La Poll Associates LLP has innovated creative legal solutions to help you manage and plan the future of your estate.
To contact an estate planning lawyer visit http://www.gilfix.com/ or call 800.244.9424.