A Monk's Tale
Father Timothy "Timo" Backous is a Catholic priest and headmaster of St. John's Preperatory School in Collegeville, Minnesota. His blog is called A Monk's Tale. He's one of those people who would fit in perfectly at Ecumen - compassionate, creative, community builder, passionate, humorous, committed, innovative, and empowering -. His mother is dying of Alzheimer's.
.... to the last and most important reality of this busy week: my mother is obviously dying and I'm fairly certain she won't be able to fend off any kind of flu bug this winter. She was diagnosed with Altzheimer's last March when stroke like symptoms began to diminish her overall health. She receives hospice care, spending most of her days in a hospital bed in her living room. My father is her doting and attentive care giver. When she speaks, she talks of rose gardens but today, as I sat next to her, she spoke of the garden of paradise...something I've not heard her mention until today.
She also claims the "Son of God is exploding" - an ominous sounding vision to say the least which I assume is nothing more than the product of her mental and physical deterioration. I have asked her if she's ready to die, wants to die and she responds with an emphatic "NO!" All of this is certainly ironic because just last November, she was part of the audience at one of my talks on end of life issues.
At that time, I had asked her if her "wishes" were in order and she, typical of us all, replied that it was not necessary at this time. She was always insistent that there were to be no heroic, unnecessary means of sustaining her life but never signed a document to make those wishes legal or binding. I'm happy to say that the treatment she receives is respectful of her humanity dignity but makes no pretense of curing or restoring her to health.
We keep her warm, fed, washed and loved until that time when her frail body can not sustain this earthly life anymore. People ask me if this is difficult and of course it is but I always add that we all have to face this time sooner or later and in a way we are lucky: there is no pain, no terrible disease, no suffering. We have been able to say almost daily how much we love her and what a great mother she is to us. Many among us are not so fortunate.
Take Survey for Communities for a Lifetime Legislation in Minnesota
The Minnesota State Board of Aging seeks your opinions via this survey on how the State of Minnesota should publicly recognize Communities for Lifetime initiatives in Minnesota. This is in response to new Communities for a Lifetime legislation passed by the State Legislature in 2010.
The Board on Aging will use the results of this survey for a Report to the Legislature on options for Minnesota to adopt a Communities for a Lifetime (CFL) recognition program. The survey takes about 10 minutes or less and will close on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2009.
Big Insurers - The New Big Tobacco
I've always wondered which industry could take over tobacco's spot as America's most reviled. Found it: Insurers. Although there are a lot of good people who work in insurance, the big insurers' trade association leaders are killing the profession's reputation. Unless their "leaders" meaningfully come to the table in this health care discussion, they're going to have a lot of work to do to enhance how people view them nationally.
Here's one such example from long-term care, that illustrates tone deafness occurring in the insurance industry right now. So the American Concil of Life Insurers (ACLI) led by former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating has been blasting the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Plan (CLASS). A few excerpts from a letter Keating wrote to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius:
ACLI: ACLI supports the goal of the CLASS Program to help adults with severe functional impairments obtain the services and supports they need to maintain their independence, while providing them with choices about community participation, education and emploument.
Ecumen: Appreciate your support of the goals ACLI. Then work with senior services and disability advocates and others to include the CLASS Plan in health care reform.
ACLI: However, we are concerned that the $50 a day benefit provided to workers would be wholly inadequate to cover the full cost of their potential long-term care needs.
Ecumen: From the outset this was never designed to pay for everything. It sure would help to get an extra $18,000+ per year, though wouldn't it? I It also might make people more likely to buy a supplement policy from one of your members for full coverage. Geez, you've been selling this product for 30 years and it's still fledgling with 5% pick up nationally. Let's try something different - it could get you more sales - and empower people to live better lives. And it would lead to authenticity in your organization's tagline: Financial Security. For Life.
ACLI: CLASS Act enrollees may well avoid exploring long-term care insurance, only to be surprised how little coverage they have at their most vulnerable moment.
Ecumen: And that's different from today or the 29 years prior that you've been selling the product? See note on supplemental policies above.
ACLI: Moreover, the CLASS Act is actuarially unsound.
Ecumen: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the CLASS Act’s net effect on the federal budget would be
to reduce the budget deficit by about $74 billion during the 2010–2019 period.4 These estimates are based
on an average monthly premium of $123 and a cash daily benefit of $75 for life, with no underwriting, that
preserves the program’s solvency for 75 years. It also assumes the premium amount would not change
once an individual enrolls, however the benefit payment would rise each year with inflation. The CBO also
estimates a reduction in Medicaid spending over 10 years because some individuals who would receive
CLASS benefits would otherwise have had Medicaid pay for those long-term services and supports. The
estimated reduction in the federal budget deficit over the 10 year period is the result of the five-year vesting
requirement; the payout of benefits would not begin until 2016, five years after the initial enrollment in 2011.
Mr. Keating, please become part of the solution and grasp opportunites in the CLASS Plan: There can be a great deal of common ground here. You can increase your members' 5% sales rate, improve people's lives and enhance your industry's reputation at the same time. There's still time for you to write another letter . . .
For more on the CLASS Plan, go to this forum held in Washington, D.C. recently by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
What Makes a Great Place to Work?
Today we celebrated the honor of being named for the 5th straight year a "Best Place to Work" by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. What I especially like about this celebration is that we share stories of why we work here and what we do to make lives better from around Ecumen via videoconference.
Stories make things much more real.
The Alzheimer's Rate - Completely Mind Boggling
Wouldn't it be great if the Ecumen team members above and thousands of others didn't have to do an Alzheimer's Walk? Wouldn't it be great if we could close all of our memory care housing? Wouldn't it be great if the cure for Alzheimer's were here?
We know the answers to those questions. Now comes new information from the Alzheimer's Association's 2009 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures Report. This is amazing stuff. It impacts those kids to the left just as it impact us who are older:
- By 2010, there will be nearly a half million new cases of Alzheimer’s each year. By 2050, that number will double to nearly a million new cases per year.
- As many as 5.3 million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Every 70 seconds, someone develops Alzheimer’s disease.
- Alzheimer’s is now the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States, surpassing diabetes; it is the fifth-leading cause of death among individuals 65 and older, following heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and stroke.
-The National Academy of Sciences estimates that an additional 3.5 million health-care workers will be required by 2030 just to maintain current levels of staffing for Alzheimer’s care demands.
- Total healthcare costs are more than three times higher for people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias than for other people age 65 and older.
Video: Insights on Aging From Ecumen Customers
Ecumen intern Ellen Burkhardt sat down with several Ecumen customers in Maplewood, Minn. and got their insights on aging.
Questions include:
- Any insights for people having anxieties about growing older?
- What are keys to successful aging?
- What's your advice for nearing retirement?
- What tips do you have on living fully?
We also invite you to read the insights of our team members and customers in 50 Tips for Aging Gracefully.
Why are all the REALLY Old People Women?
Sarah Kliff, senior reporter at Newsweek did some interesting research to address the question: Why are all the really old people women? Sixty-eight of the 72 known "supercentenarians" (people 110 and older) are female, even though there are more boys than girls born each year.
Here's what she came up with for reasons - do you agree? Any others you'd put? Also, for 50 Ways to Age Gracefully, go here (these are from Ecumen customers and employees)
The danger years
The difference between male and female death rates peaks between ages 20 and 24—during which men are six times as likely to be murdered and five times as likely to die of a non-automobile accident.
Toxic testosterone
The hormone increases levels of bad cholesterol (known as LDL) and decreases levels of good cholesterol (HDL), while estrogen does just the opposite.
Gunplay
Whether it's homicide, suicide, or by accident, men are five times more likely to die by firearms than women.
Drop-dead diseases
Fatal conditions like cancer and heart disease are common among men, while women are more likely to suffer from chronic nonfatal conditions such as arthritis, osteoporosis, and autoimmune disorders.
Overwhelming emotions
The tendency to ignore signs of depression and emotional distress may account for the fact that, between the ages of 75 and 79, men are nine times more likely to commit suicide.
Mrs. Brady's Tech Support for Older Adults
Actress
Florence Henderson, best known as the mom from The Brady Bunch, launched THE FLOH CLUB last month, a telephone-based technical support service that aims to empower older adults. After years of sticking her head in the sand when it came to computers, one of America's favorite TV moms wanted technology to be simple. "I know a lot of people my age who are real computer buffs," Florence observes. "Still, so many older adults, who did not grow up with this technology, find computers daunting and frustrating." They feel it's beyond their abilities to use computers the way younger people do and are often hesitant to ask for help, not wanting to be a bother. The Floh Club was created to focus on the needs, concerns, and interests of people who didn't grow up with computer technology and uses patient and friendly North American-based support experts.
Floh Club members receive any-time support for computer issues big and small, like setting up a printer, learning to use Facebook, or how to check financial and stock performance online. Membership fees vary - from 24.99/month or $249.99 annually, to a one-time "Empowerment Session" for assistance with something like iPod setup and digital music downloading or how to videoconference with Skype.
Hats off to this 75-year old actress-turned-entrepeneur for helping to empower seniors! ~Helen Rickman
Let's Stop These Kind of Stories - Please Join us Today in Support of The CLASS Plan
Please read the excerpt below from this National Public Radio story. If you want to do help do something about this right now, please join us in doing two things today:
1. Call (800) 958-5374 before 5 p.m. Central and urge your senators to contact Sen. Harry Reid in support of the CLASS Plan. When you call, the operator will ask you to say your state's name and will then transfer you automatically to one of your senator's offices.
2. Register for Ecumen's Changing Aging grassroots network here.
Thank you!
Donna Taylor's father was the rock of the family. He was the primary caregiver for his disabled wife and her elderly mother. But he got sick and went into the hospital for 10 days. When he got out, he couldn't walk.
Taylor, 41, and her siblings — all of whom had families and children of their own — helped out. But with three elderly, disabled adults in one house, caregiving got expensive. Taylor says her father was surprised at how quickly the family went through its savings.
"He said, 'I worked and I did the right things. I had a pension and I put money away in savings and I had what I thought were the right insurances and the money didn't go far enough.' It just, it just wasn't enough."
When Insurance Isn't Enough
Like most Americans, Taylor's parents believed that Medicare and their private health insurance would pay all the costs of living in a nursing home. It doesn't. Medicare, the federal health insurance for the elderly and disabled, paid the full cost of her father's first 20 days in a rehabilitation nursing home for therapy to try to get him walking again.
But Medicaid, the state and federal insurance program for the poor, does pay for someone to stay long-term in a nursing home. So Taylor told her father he'd have to spend through the rest of his savings, go into poverty, and qualify for Medicaid.
"If you have ever had to look in the eyes of a 64-year-old man who has now had to live in a nursing home, and it's horrible," she says. "And he never ever made me feel bad about that decision. He never said, 'Donna why'd you do this to me?' But he told me, 'This isn't how it was supposed to work out.'"
Taylor's father died in that Phoenix nursing home last year. The nursing home is part of Arizona Baptist Retirement Centers, where Taylor works as an executive vice president. Taylor thinks her father sort of gave up on life.
Better Options
Proposals written into health care overhaul legislation would help families like Donna Taylor's, says John Rother, of the AARP.
One would encourage states to offer more generous benefits to disabled and elderly people on Medicaid who want to stay in their own homes.
And then, says Rother, there's something that could help millions of people. "The CLASS Act," he says, "which was introduced by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, is a way of putting into place, gradually, an insurance approach to long-term care as opposed to the welfare-based approach we have today."
Workers would choose whether to have money deducted from their paychecks. The deduction would, on average, come to about $65 a month and, when needed, it would pay about $75 a day, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. That's a little less than half of what one day in a nursing home costs now.
"The CLASS Act is not designed to protect people from the cost of nursing home care, very expensive care," says Rother. "It's really designed to help you stay independent at home and to get the services you need: home care, Meals on Wheels, visiting nurse. The kind of thing people do need very often to be able to continue to live independently, and, you know, I think that's actually what most of us want."
Please Call Your U.S. Senators on Tuesday, October 13
It takes just seconds . . . . please call your U.S. Senator today . . . urge them to urge Sen. Harry Reid and make The CLASS Plan (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Plan) part of health care reform legislation. The health care discussion is at a crucial point. On Tuesday the Senate Finance committee will vote on The Baucus Bill, setting up a future floor vote on health care legislation. We need to help get The CLASS Plan in there . . .
Your Call-In Number
Our colleagues at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) have arranged a toll-free call-in for Tuesday, Oct. 13 from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. Please call (800) 958-5374. You will then be asked in which state you live and will be patched in to one of your two Senators' offices.
Please urge your Senator to contact Sen. Harry Reid in support of the CLASS plan.
Thank You for taking this action on behalf of people across the country committed to Changing Aging for the better.
Sample Script
(If you're calling Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Franken from Minnesota, please also thank them for their support of The CLASS Plan.)
Hello. I am calling to ask Senator [INSERT SENATOR's LAST NAME] to contact Sen. Harry Reid and urge him to make sure that the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) provisions are included in the final health care reform legislation. People need help accessing the long-term services and supports required to remain independent and at home. I thank Senator [INSERT LAST NAME] in advance for the support, and I look forward to a response.