"The old and young are feuding — yet again.

It’s safe to assume this is an immortal aspect of human society: Young people always exist, and older people will always complain about them. Young people, in turn, always say, “Ugh, old people just don’t get it.”

Recently, that “Ugh, old people just don’t get it” has metastasized into the viral “OK boomer” meme.

If you’re just tuning in: “OK boomer” is a clapback for the rising Generation Z to call out older adults on their collective lack of inaction on climate change, for their (overall) resistance to progressive policies, and for the condescending tone older people tend to use when describing the “kids these days.” The boomers, well, haven’t taken too kindly to the phrase. One conservative radio host called it “the n-word of ageism.”

Go here -> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/11/12/20950235/ok-boomer-kids-these-days-psychology

"Supporting Family Caregivers: No Longer Home Alone," American Journal of Nursing, Updated:   November 25, 2019

"This series of articles won the 2018 ASHPE Bronze Award for Best Special Supplement. They were written to help nurses provide family caregivers with tools to manage their loved one’s health care at home. Produced in cooperation with the AARP Public Policy Institute, each article includes an informational tear sheet and links to educational videos for caregivers."

Go here -> https://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/pages/collectiondetails.aspx?TopicalCollectionId=38

"Sixteen percent of the civilian noninstitutional population age 15 and over or 40.4 million people provide unpaid eldercare, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. About one-fourth (26 percent) of eldercare providers engage in unpaid eldercare on a given day, spending an average of 3.4 hours providing this care. These estimates are averages for the 2-year period of 2017-18.

Eldercare providers are defined as individuals who provide unpaid care to someone age 65 or older who needs help because of a condition related to aging. This care can be provided to household or nonhousehold members, as well as persons living in retirement homes or assisted care facilities.
Eldercare can involve a range of care activities, such as assisting with grooming, preparing meals, and providing transportation. Eldercare also can involve providing companionship or being available to assist when help is needed, and thus it can be associated with nearly any activity."

Go here -> https://www.bls.gov/news.release/elcare.toc.htm

Go here -> https://waysandmeans.house.gov/legislation/hearings/caring-aging-americans

"Michelle Dehetre, a 48-year-old mother of five, had to pull over while driving last March and be taken to the emergency room when her blood sugar dropped too low. One reason for that dangerous decline: The Lewiston, Maine, resident had cut back on her diabetes meds, unable to afford the $300 per month that her treatment would cost, even with insurance.

And Tameka Woodard, 42, a medical assistant from Aberdeen, N.C., moved in with her mother last February so that she could afford medications for high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, and diabetes. Even with insurance, just one of her drugs costs more than $900 per month. “I have insurance, but my medications aren’t covered,” Woodard says.

Their stories are not uncommon. “High drug prices are financially toxic for American workers,” says Stacie B. Dusetzina, Ph.D., associate professor of health policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., and co-author of a 2017 report on drug costs by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine."

Go here -> https://www.consumerreports.org/drug-prices/the-shocking-rise-of-prescription-drug-prices/

And here -> http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2017/making-medicines-affordable-a-national-imperative.aspx

"Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

In 2015–2016, 45.8% of the U.S. population used prescription drugs in the past 30 days.
Prescription drug use increased with age, from 18.0% of children under age 12 years to 85.0% of adults aged 60 and over."

Go here -> https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db334.htm

 

"Visualizing Health Policy: US Public’s Perspective on Prescription Drug Costs," Kaiser Family Foundation, October 15, 2019
Repost.
"This Visualizing Health Policy infographic examines public opinion on prescription drug costs in the United States (US). Over the past 20 years, US drug spending has increased by 330% compared to a 208% increase in total US health expenditures. A Large majority (78%) of the public see drug company profits as the top contributor to higher health care spending. Lowering drug costs is the public’s top health policy priority for the US Congress.  While most adults (59%) say prescription drugs have made their lives better, many (79%) also say the cost is unreasonable. Three in 10 report they have not taken medications as prescribed in the past year because of the cost. Across political affiliation, the public supports many actions to lower drug costs. Requiring drug companies to include list prices in ads, making it easier for generics to come to market, and allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies were among the most popular strategies."

Go here -> https://www.kff.org/infographic/visualizing-health-policy-us-publics-perspective-on-prescription-drug-costs/

"The Logic of Medical Co-Payments," Dean Baker,  Center for Economic and Policy Research, November 11, 2019
"Aaron Carroll had a very useful NYT Upshot piece highlighting research showing that even modest co-payments discourage people from getting necessary medical care. The article is about co-payments for prescription drugs where it highlights research showing that people will often skip taking prescribed drugs to avoid co-payments. There are a couple of points worth making about co-payments in this context and more generally.

First, if a drug has been prescribed for a patient, then it is the judgment of a medical professional that they need this drug for their health. The argument for co-pays, that we want people to think twice before getting the treatment, really should not apply here since a medical professional has determined that they do need the treatment. It doesn't make sense, in general, to encourage people to substitute their own judgment for that of a medical professional. (That doesn't mean that medical professionals will always be right, but it would be best if patients made the determination to ignore their judgment based on their own research, not the desire to save a co-pay.)

The other point is that drugs are almost invariably cheap. By this, I mean that they are cheap to manufacture and distribute. The research can be expensive, but this is a sunk cost at the point where the drug is being prescribed for the patient. If all drugs sold as generics, with no patent or related protections, they would rarely cost more than $10 or $20 per prescription. For this reason, there are not much savings to society if we get people to take fewer drugs, we are just risking people's health with co-pays."

Go here ->http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-logic-of-medical-co-payments

 And here -> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/upshot/drugs-cost-diabetes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

"It’s time to get serious about a major redesign of life. Thirty years were added to average life expectancy in the 20th century, and rather than imagine the scores of ways we could use these years to improve quality of life, we tacked them all on at the end. Only old age got longer.

As a result, most people are anxious about the prospect of living for a century. Asked about aspirations for living to 100, typical responses are “I hope I don’t outlive my money” or “I hope I don’t get dementia.” If we do not begin to envision what satisfying, engaged and meaningful century-long lives can look like, we will certainly fail to build worlds that can take us there."

Go here -> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-need-a-major-redesign-of-life/2019/11/29/a63daab2-1086-11ea-9cd7-a1becbc82f5e_story.html

And here -> http://longevity.stanford.edu/envision-new-map-of-life/

"America’s Care of Serious Illness: 2019 State-by-State Report Card on Access to Palliative Care in Our Nation’s Hospitals demonstrates that access to palliative care continues to remain variable and depends more upon accidents of geography, whether a hospital is for-profit or nonprofit, and hospital size than it does upon the needs of patients living with a serious illness, and their families.

According to the new report, the U.S. shows continued growth in the overall number of hospital palliative care teams: 72% of U.S. hospitals with fifty or more beds report a palliative care team. This is up from 67% in 2015, 53% in 2008, and 7% in 2001. These hospitals currently serve 87% of all hospitalized patients in the U.S., yet the overall grade for the United States in 2019 is a B, unchanged from 2015."

Go here -> https://reportcard.capc.org/

"Cybercrimes against older adults have increased five-times since 2014, costing more than $650 million in losses per year, according to FBI and FTC statistics compiled for a new study on protecting senior citizens from cyberattacks. Older adults also lose large sums to online frauds like email compromise and wire fraud, according to the study.

And that’s only for crimes that are self-reported. The real numbers are likely higher, said Ginny Fahs, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Tech Policy Hub who led the study.

Fahs said she was drawn to the problem of online scams aimed at seniors after recognizing a significant gap: certain cybercrimes were disproportionately targeting older adults, but those same elderly internet users didn’t know about the law enforcement solutions meant to help them, and many were falling through the cracks.

The new study suggests changes to how the FBI collects information and responds to online crimes targeting older adults, and provides suggestions for how those living on lucrative bank balances, pensions and retirement funds -- and their loved ones -- can better protect their assets from common online frauds."
Go here -> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/23/new-research-pinpoints-how-elderly-people-are-targeted-in-online-scams.html

And here -> https://www.aspentechpolicyhub.org/project/protecting-older-users-online/

"The past year has starkly illustrated how pervasive and deep-rooted the disinformation problem is in American society. We learned, for example, of the shocking revelations that the information associated with 87 million Facebook users had been illegally accessed by Cambridge Analytica. And we have been sequentially disheartened by news of data breach after data breach, each of which has discouraged any faith we might have had that Silicon Valley can effectively regulate itself to fight digital disinformation.

Centrally responsible for the stubbornness of the disinformation problem is the business model that sits at the heart of the internet itself—a business model that is premised on (1) the creation of borderline-addictive web-based services that enjoy a network effect; (2) the unchecked collection of personal data through those services to create behavioral profiles; and (3) the development and implementation of opaque algorithms that curate content in our social feeds and target ads at us."

Go here -> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/older-adults-are-especially-prone-to-social-media-bubbles/

"There were warning signs: A constantly ringing phone. Bank accounts in disarray after an apparent hack. Messages from her family that went unreturned for days because she was extremely busy. A new man in her life, with whom she talked over the phone but never in person. Rochelle, an active, social, independent 86-year-old resident of Los Angeles, was being exploited by an international fraudster. But it was only months after those signs first appeared that the people who cared about her made sense of them."

Go here -> https://www.kiplinger.com/article/retirement/T048-C000-S002-watch-out-for-the-elder-fraud-web.html

"Robert Goodman had planned to go back to work after chemotherapy. The Florida teacher who taught world history for much of his 25-year career was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in April 2018. To cover him through his treatment, he had to ask his fellow teachers to donate their sick days. Without those extra 20 days, he would have to finish chemo — a time when your immune system is weakened, your body vulnerable to nearly any germ — while still showing up for work every day, or he would risk losing everything.

His ask for help resonated with teachers from his district, who transferred around 75 of their own sick days to him in credits. It was enough time for him to qualify for catastrophic leave, complete his chemotherapy without worrying about work, and get himself back into the classroom by the new year."

Go here -> https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/11/26/20982211/feel-good-news-inspiration

"After all, there are tens of billions of dollars in profits at stake. Which is why those groups formed the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, which will be the vanguard of the war on health-care reform should a Democrat be elected president and try to get an ambitious bill passed.

Here’s one of the most important things to understand about these interests: They despise “moderate” reform as much as they do Medicare-for-all. There are reasons the kind of expansive public-option plan being offered by Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg is more politically practical than single-payer, but opposition from industry is not one of them. Just look, for instance, at this ad from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, in which actors doing their best worried faces say, “Politicians may call it Medicare-for-all, Medicare buy-in or the public option, but they mean the same thing: higher taxes or higher premiums, lower quality care, politicians and bureaucrats in control of our care.”

Go here -> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/02/why-health-care-industry-wants-destroy-any-democratic-reform/

And here -> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/02/state-lawmakers-acknowledge-lobbyists-helped-craft-their-op-eds-attacking-medicare-for-all/