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Paul Ryan proposed a private health insurance alternative to Medicare for future retirees, liberal critics pounced. It’s another scheme to undermine health care for the elderly by “privatizing” and “voucher-izing” the program, they said.Yet, almost one third of seniors are already in private health insurance plans. They are called Medicare Part C, or Medicare Advantage, plans. And you would be hard pressed to find any Democratic office holder who wants to abolish them. The reason? Seniors choose to be in these plans because they like them better than traditional Medicare.Not only do seniors like them, but they appear to provide...

Screening older patients for cancer provided minimal benefit at considerable cost and increased use of invasive procedures, reported investigators in two separate studies. "It is particularly important to question screening strategies for older persons," Gross continued. "Patients with a shorter life expectancy have less time to develop clinically significant cancers after a screening test and are more likely to die from noncancer health problems after a cancer diagnosis."

Newsmax Professor: Robots Are the Future of Elder Care Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:01 AM By: Sandy Fitzgerald Many older people need someone who is always there to help them with their everyday tasks, to listen to their stories, and to help them live independently — in other words, a robot caregiver, writes an associate professor of geriatrics in Sunday's New York Times. "That may sound like an oxymoron," writes the University of California's Louise Aronson in her opinion piece. "In an ideal world, it would be: Each of us would have at least one kind and fully capable human...

Even as millions of baby boomers approach retirement, the Social Security Administration has been closing dozens of field offices, forcing more and more seniors to seek help online instead of in person, according to a congressional report being released Wednesday. The agency blames budget constraints. As a result, seniors seeking information and help from the agency are facing increasingly long waits, in person and on the phone, the report said. Social Security has closed 64 field offices since 2010, the largest number of closures in a five-year period in the agency’s history, according to a report by the bipartisan staff...

Retirement systems around the world are expected to face a significant burden in the next 50 years. The number of people over the age of 60 is expected to double from 841 million in 2013, to over 2 billion by 2050, according to the UN. What's more this has been accompanied by falling global birth rates. In fact, the global share of people over the age of 60 has gone from 9.2% in 1990, to 11.7% in 2013 and is expected to hit 21.1% in 2050, according to Bank of America's Sarbjit Nahal and Beijia Ma. The number of people...

Cynicism linked to dementia in new study Thursday 29 May 2014 - 12am PST Alzheimer's / Dementia Psychology / Psychiatry Seniors / Aging Featured ArticleAcademic Journal Cynical distrust is characterized by the belief that others are motivated by selfish interests. Though it may appear to be merely a "glass is half empty" point of view, researchers say having this viewpoint increases chances of developing dementia. The researchers, led by Anna-Malia Tolppanen, PhD, of the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, publish their findings in the journal Neurology. They say that cynicism has been previously linked with other health problems, including...

On May 7, the Obama administration boasted that ObamaCare was improving health-care quality for seniors, and it pulled out a bag of statistical tricks to prove it. But a closer look shows that it’s not improving care. It’s skimping on it, socking seniors with unexpected bills for “observation care” and likely shortening their lives. President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services announced that fewer seniors discharged from the hospital are returning for additional care within a month’s time. HHS claims that this drop in “readmissions,” from 18.5 percent in 2012 to 17.5 percent in 2013, signals quality improvement. Nationwide,...

On May 7, the Obama administration boasted that ObamaCare was improving health-care quality for seniors, and it pulled out a bag of statistical tricks to prove it. But a closer look shows that it’s not improving care. It’s skimping on it, socking seniors with unexpected bills for “observation care” and likely shortening their lives. President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services announced that fewer seniors discharged from the hospital are returning for additional care within a month’s time. HHS claims that this drop in “readmissions,” from 18.5 percent in 2012 to 17.5 percent in 2013, signals quality improvement. Nonsense....

A Generation Of Old People Is About To Change The Global Economy The Economist Apr. 27, 2014, 9:22 AM    In the 20th century the planet’s population doubled twice. It will not double even once in the current century, because birth rates in much of the world have declined steeply. But the number of people over 65 is set to double within just 25 years. This shift in the structure of the population is not as momentous as the expansion that came before. But it is more than enough to reshape the world economy. According to the UN’s...

Women feel invisible to the opposite sex at the age of 51, it emerged yesterday. A detailed study of 2,000 women revealed a large percentage felt they no longer received the level of attention they once did after hitting 51. Many even went as far as to admit they felt ‘ignored’. The women claimed their confidence plummeted after hitting 50 and blamed greying hair, having to to wear glasses or even struggling to find fashionable clothes. The lifestyle study, commissioned by herbal remedies company, A.Vogel, also found more than two thirds of women over 45 had walked into a room...

Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year. The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing the group aged 65 and over by 21 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and by 12 points in the 2012 presidential race. Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. A recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades; in 2013, 48 percent considered themselves Republican. That spells trouble for Democrats, who...

Democrats are battling the White House over proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage, creating a new divide on healthcare just as the party had begun to rally around ObamaCare’s 7.1 million enrollees. The issue threatens the newfound momentum Democrats have on healthcare after a late surge of ObamaCare enrollees surprised and electrified a party that had been beaten down after months of bad news associated with the healthcare law’s rollout. It’s particularly sensitive during an election year, as both parties court senior voters, who make up a disproportionate percentage of the voting population in midterm elections. The issue creates another...

A new report by the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at National Right to Life warns that one of the Obamacare provisions that ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Americans would discover if Congress passed the bill is that some seniors will not be allowed to spend as much as they wish on their health care. The extreme position was revealed in a special report by the NRLC titled “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States,” which analyzes four fundamental policy areas of Obamacare. It finds several ways that the federal health care law “will...

The possibility of being called a liar by Harry Reid isn't stopping this group of senior citizens from speaking out.

Nancy Pelosi said Americans would find out all about ObamaCare if Congress would only pass the bill. Now we’re finding that some seniors will not be allowed to spend as much as they choose to on their health care – even if they’re willing to pony up for it. ! Turns out that with ObamaCare, even if you qualify for health care you just might not get any.. A new report by the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at National Right to Life titled “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States,” analyzes four fundamental...

To say that President Obama is not an enthusiastic backer of the two Medicare programs that offer seniors private insurance options would be something of an understatement. Over the years, Obama has repeatedly derided Medicare Advantage — the program that lets seniors enroll in subsidized, private insurance. He once called it "wasteful," and said it amounted to "giveaways that boost insurance company profits but don't make (seniors) any healthier." Obama has been equally harsh when it comes to Medicare Part D — the drug benefit President Bush signed into law that relies on privately run plans. In his 2006 book,...

The health insurance industry fighting proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage payments argued they will raise seniors' out-of-pocket costs next year. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group, blasted the reductions with a report Thursday finding that beneficiaries could pay as much as $900 more in 2015 if the cuts take effect. The report by consulting firm Oliver Wyman concluded that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans could see a 5.9 percent total cut to their payments next year as a result of changes proposed by federal health officials. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) floated a 2015 cut of...

She may not look anywhere near her 76 years but Jane Fonda says she is well aware of her age. The Hollywood legend – who has made her career in an industry which isn't exactly kind to aging actresses - admits she has been brought to tears on more than one occasion recently as she comes to terms with her own mortality. In a thoughtful blog post entitled 'Crying', which has since been removed, Jane wrote: '[I've been thinking], how come my tears are so close to the surface? And I’ve come to feel it has to do with age....

The brains of older people only appear to slow down because they have so much information to compute, much like a full-up hard drive, scientists believe. Older people do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because they have more information in their brains, scientists believe. Much like a computer struggles as the hard drive gets full up, so to (sic) do humans take longer to access information, it has been suggested. Researchers say this slowing down it is not the same as cognitive decline. “The human brain works slower in old age,” said...

PHILADELPHIA — Jerry Zeft was so excited to move into his new apartment that he slept on an air mattress for nearly a week while he waited for his bed and other belongings to catch up with him. No matter that he's 70 years old. Zeft had landed a coveted spot in a new affordable housing complex for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors in the heart of downtown Philadelphia. Only two other U.S. cities have similar developments. "I wanted to get into a community that I'm more comfortable in," Zeft said shortly after picking up the keys to his...