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.
Join Ecumen and AAHSA for a U.S. Senate Call-In Day on Oct. 13th
Help us make long-term services and supports affordable for all Americans. Join the Ecumen Changing Aging Advocacy Network and join us and others for a U.S. Senate call-in day on Tuesday, October 13th.
It takes just seconds.
On Tuesday, October 13th, we will be joining senior services and disability advocates around the country in support of long-term care financing reform. Our message to our Senators: Tell Sen. Harry Reid to ensure that the Community Assistance Services and Support plan (CLASS) is included as part of health care reform.
Thanks to our colleagues at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA), which is making this call-in day possible.
When Will Target Stores Embrace Aging?
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When will Target Stores, which prides itself as a trend-setter for youth embrace the timeless trend of aging?
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Michael Graves gets "design." But the superstar designer also gets aging and living with the challenges of physical disability. For years he has put his stamp on new wave tea kettles more than 1,000 other items for Target. Now he's putting his touch on design for products for seniors and other people living with disabilities through a company called Drive Medical.
Graves, 75, is paralyzed below the waist. A meningitis bout took away his use of his legs in 2003. According to a recent AP story, the famed architect says he became "an instant expert" on difficulties facing people with disabilities.
But Graves said his disability was not the reason Drive Medical approached him about designing a new logo, which led to the company asking Graves to design a line of new products in 2004.
"I'm not even sure they knew I was in a wheelchair at the time," Graves recalled.
The line began small in 2006, with a Graves-designed heating pad, and recently expanded to include bath benches and bathtub rails.
Two of those Drive Medical devices are on display at a Minneapolis Institute of Arts exhibit celebrating Graves' 40-plus years as a designer, architect and artist. The exhibition, which opened in late August, is housed in the three-story, $50 million Graves-designed Target Wing addition that opened at the MIA in 2006. Called "From Towers to Teakettles: Michael Graves Architecture and Design," the exhibit runs through Jan. 3, 2010.
One of the Drive Medical devices on display is an adjustable bathtub rail that clamps to the edge of the tub. In contrast to the stainless steel grab rails usually seen in institutional settings, Graves' offering is a soft blue oval ring set onto a metal frame clad in white plastic with a bright orange knob for adjustments.
A sleek silver Graves-designed collapsible cane that folds into a black bag also is on display.
Drive Medical spokesman Edward Link said the Port Washington, N.Y.-based company was looking for an acclaimed designer who could remove the "medicinal look" of health-care products.
Graves has designed about a dozen products for Drive Medical in three areas: bathroom safety, including the bath rail and bath and shower seats, which are now available online and in medical specialty stores; mobility, such as the cane; and aids for daily living, such as reachers. The Graves-designed canes and reachers will be rolled out over the next three to six months.
Graves said his Princeton, N.J.-based design group, which has designed more than 1,800 consumer products, thinks "about the whole community" when it starts any product design.
"We don't treat them differently in terms of the human being that's going to hold it, assemble it," Graves said. "Whether you're a young homeowner or you're in a nursing home ...you can open the jar with our jar opener."
Designs for the disabled need to take into account that not everyone with a disability is the same, Graves said. In his own case, Graves said, he suffered spinal pain after his paralysis, and the first wheelchair and minivan he used did not have the right shock absorbers to cushion against bumps.
"Every day is learning for me because I'm in a wheelchair," Graves said, adding that designing for the disabled is rewarding. "I think for me, it's kind of payback."
Target is not currently carrying any of Grave's new products for seniors and others living with disabilities. What a missed opportunity by a company that prides itself on being ahead of the curve.
Marathoner Borrows Catheter On Course to Finish on Top
Jerry Johncock is one determined guy. The 81-year-old marathoner above (2008 photo by Toni Johncock) found himself at mile 21 of Sunday's Twin Cities Marathon having to go to the bathroom. Here's a summary from Paul Walsh of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Johncock, who became the first American 80 or over to break the four-hour mark at last year's Twin Cities Marathon, was overcome with discomfort from a full bladder during this year's race. He knew that a blood clot was preventing him from urinating.
With no catheter at the official aid station on East River Road in St. Paul, staffers there were telling the age-groupchampion runner that he would have to drop out and be taken to a hospital.
"I told them, 'I gotta finish this marathon!'" said Johncock, who has run more than 100 marathons since he took up running at age 50 and has never dropped out.
Then from among the spectators, a middle-aged man piped up. "'I have a catheter in my car,'" Johncock recalled his anonymous rescuer saying.
The medical device was retrieved, Johncock entered the first aid van and "a first aid person helped me poke it into my bladder," allowing him to urinate.
"As soon as I got the catheter, I [urinated] and I was good to go," the retired television repairman said. "Oh, what a relief that was."
And yesterday, he learned that he won't be penalized for stepping of the course for assistance. He'll soon receive the $225 prize for finishing first in the 80-84 age group. Congratulations to Jerry Johncock and the Good Samaritan who provided the timely assist.
Senator Klobuchar and Senator Franken Support The CLASS Act
Thank you to Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Senator Al Franken for their support of the national long-term care insurance plan The CLASS Act. Ecumen is an ardent supporter, too. It just makes sense.
Kaiser Foundation columnist Howard Gleckman writes in his blog how The CLASS Act is still very much alive.
Jim Klobuchar -- Pro Football's Threat to Peace and Sanity
In Texas they recently consecrated a new football stadium so big that some of the 100,000 customers had to turn on GPS coordinates to locate their seats.
The stadium is a 21st Century Temple of Karnak that cost well over a billion dollars and takes up a combined surface and air footage rivaled in America only by the Pentagon to the east and Yellowstone Park to the west.
I confess having written five books on professional football and still harbor a fugitive fondness for the game. It is now a colossus whose nationally televised games are introduced by a cowboy guitar plucker emerging through the sound and fury of a dozen exploding smoke bombs. This is followed by a screeching soprano trying to achieve the scientifically impossible feat of spreading the national anthem over five octaves.
So I watched this game between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants more in sadness than hysterics. The game itself is still recognizable and stirring. Usually it is suspenseful, granted that three or four of the interior linemen on each team are now posters for the spreading obesity in America. The rest are swift and often graceful. All are tough, driven athletes, engaged in high stakes games in which millionaire ballplayers hammer each other, and the TV networks produce record ratings and income.
I watched without resentment because it’s essentially America’s game, attracting increasing millions of followers, a game now impossible to avoid. I’ve regretted the disappearance of the more relaxed era of pro football I knew but also enjoyed today’s emergence of women sports journalists in print, on line and on the sidelines. These feelings drift back two or three decades when I taught an annual football class for women for the Minneapolis newspaper. More than 200 knowledge-hungry scholars, average age 35 or 40, crowded the classroom eight times during the season. They learned how to translate the game’s gobbledygook and the difference between a red dog and a hot dog. Borrowing from the quarterback’s cadence, we called it the Hut-Hut Clinic. As The Professor, I gave final exams, which everyone passed. At graduation the Viking coach gave the commencement talk. We annually took field trips by bus to the Viking-Bears game in Soldier Field in Chicago. My students came dressed in those horned Brunhilde helmets, perfect protection when the Bears’ fans tried to pour beer on them.
The game now is bigger, faster, better, more boisterous, possibly more brutal, and glutted with money. It’s a show, and a good one. The personalities are larger than life and pro football is now round the calendar. And yet the best times for me were and are those when you see a core humanity in it and even, strangely, moments of beauty.
Walter Payton was a marvelous football player for the Chicago Bears. He was one of the finest runners ever, a spirited, joyful guy loved by everyone who played with or against him. He was also mischievous. Officials sometimes caught him untying their shoes under the pile. The players called him Sweetness.
He died in his 40s, not that long after his retirement. The hours after his death were filled with a solidarity of grief that united players, coaches and fans and seemed to dissolve the conflicts dividing them. In those hours of mourning, pro football became a community, in faces and voices brought together from TV studios around the country, bound in a remembrance of an extraordinary athlete and good man. He was a football player whose death could reach a harsh and willful man like Mike Ditka and others like him, and touch them with humility. It could reach a stoical and undemonstrative man like Bud Grant and touch him with tenderness. It could reach an uncompromising competitor like Mike Singletary and touch him with peace.
So there, there is more to it than the bombast.
The Big Move: Easing Relocation for Older Adults
Minneapolis gerontologist Laura Hopp conducted a study involving 62 older adults (age 55+) who had recently gone through the move to an independent living community. The study looked at reasons surrounding to decision and what things made the move difficult or easier.
The top reasons for leaving were the participants' homes were no longer suitable for physical needs and the maintenance increasingly difficult (30%). Being closer to family and building a social network was a close second (28%). Downsizing and letting go of possessions was the hardest part of the move for 39%, followed by leaving friends and community (30%). Most (54%) found nothing could make the move easier, although getting rid of belongings would have made the move easier. Hopp states, "because possessions hold many memories, it's difficult to let go. But some wanted to watch loved ones enjoy gifts while they were still alive. Many participants talked about giving belongings to charity, with donations to a local library or historical society other, satisfactory options."
Hopp believes that most moves are prompted by adult children. "This is partly related to their being caught in the middle between their parents and their own children. [Parenthood] does not allow the adult child to give their parents the care they need. This often then leads the children to look at a community of care for their parents. Most often the children come looking at communities...before they bring Mom or Dad by to visit or tour."
When asked what advice they'd give to other seniors contemplating a move to an independent living community, the study participants said to be sure you understand the facility, the services offered, and talk to current residents. Additionally, get involved in the new community as soon as possible, don’t bring too many belongings, use a good moving company, and do it before it is no longer your decision.
~Helen Rickman
The Boss and 84-Year-Old Fan Dancing in the Dark
Jeanne Heintz, 84-years-old, gets opportunity of a lifetime to dance with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band in Des Moines.
Join Ecumen's Changing Aging Grassroots Advocacy Network
We invite you to join our online grassroots advocacy network in support of public policy that enhances Ecumen's vision of changing aging: "We envision a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways."
You can join our network here. We'll never share your personal data and you can unsubscribe at any time. Much of our advocacy work is in Minnesota, but we also rally for national policy innovations such as The CLASS Act (Community Assistance Living and Supports Act), which would provide a voluntary national insurance benefit for long-term care. People would be able to direct their benefits to the services they desire.
CLASS ACT UPDATE
The CLASS Act, which came out of the late Sen. Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor and PensionsHELP committee, is supported by all major senior services and disability groups. Although Sen. Baucus did not include it in his bill, we are hopeful that it will be part of the ultimate reform bill. Earlier this week the White House reaffirmed its support for the CLASS Act during a town-hall style meeting in Silver Springs, MD. Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hosted the event.
For further updates, visit The Future of Aging Blog, by the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.