Free Republic

Lynne Ingersoll and her cat, Jesse, spent a quiet Thanksgiving Day together in her small bungalow in Blue Island, Ill. A retired librarian, Ms. Ingersoll never married or had children. At 77, she has outlived her parents, three partners, her two closest friends, five dogs and eight cats. When her sister died three years ago, Ms. Ingersoll joined the ranks of older Americans considered “kinless”: without partners or spouses, children or siblings. Covid-19 has largely suspended her occasional get-togethers with friends, too. Now, she said, “my social life consists of doctors and store clerks — that’s a joke, but it’s...

<p>Viking rock music and whole pigs roasting on spits drew thousands of Swedes to a festival hosted by nationalists poised to deliver their country’s biggest political upheaval in a century.</p> <p>The Sweden Democrats have been led since 2005 by a clean-cut and bespectacled man, Jimmie Akesson. He’s gentrified a party that traces its roots back to the country’s neo-Nazi, white supremacist fringe. Some polls now show the group may become the biggest in Sweden’s parliament after general elections on Sept. 9. Such an outcome would end 100 years of Social Democratic dominance.</p>

Starting Jan. 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will begin slashing 14 percent of their Home Health Care Prospective Payment Program budget, driving small home health-care providers out of business and potentially affecting millions of poor, elderly citizens in need of physical rehabilitation. The cuts — which are being made to fund Obamacare — will slash the homecare budget 3.5 percent every year for the next four. “By CMS’s own calculation, 40 percent or nearly 5,000 home health companies — mainly small businesses — will experience a “net loss” in revenue due to the cuts and go...

A 90-year-old dementia patient was found last month alone in his room with a dead rat lodged in his mouth...

Recently, I received an elderly patient brought in by the medics who was “found down” (unconscious and unresponsive) by a neighbor who had passed by her apartment and noticed a foul odor. She had fallen for some inexplicable reason, and lay immobilized on her right side for what we estimate to have been about a week. Her entire right side from her knees to her shoulder was burned by the chemicals in her own urine. Her right hip looked like a rotten apple, bruised and mushy, destroyed to the bone under damaged skin. The wasting of her muscles caused a...

Pearl the personal-assistant robot walks, talks and even blinks her eyes. She has ears, eyebrows and even lips of a kind on her mobile "face." To an infirm person living alone, this high-tech metal device that can dispense advice and even guide movements around the house is a substitute for an increasingly rare -- and expensive -- flesh-and-bones home health care worker. By providing visual and auditory reminders on when to take medicine or even go to the bathroom, Pearl can help a fragile senior maintain his or her independence outside an assisted living facility. The robot has a laser...