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By Ralph Robbins from AgingCare.com
Q: Can a senior qualify for Medicaid if they already receive Medicare?
A: Yes, a person can receive both Medicare and Medicaid. When a Medicare beneficiary begins receiving Medicaid benefits they are deemed a “Dual Eligible.” Dual eligibles have enhanced benefits.
Here’s how it works: Medicare continues to be the person’s primary insurer. They are free to go to any provider that accepts Medicare. This means they are not limited to “Medicaid Doctors” (as those who are not Medicare eligible typically are).
If the beneficiary has a Medicare supplement or is a member of an HMO or other Medicare Part C Advantage plan, that insurer will be the secondary insurer. In this case, Medicaid is now the “tertiary” insurer and picks up expenses that Medicare and the HMO do not.
Dual eligibles also have their Part B Medicare premium paid and their Part D prescription premium subsidized. Co-pays for prescriptions medicine go to $1 and $5 with no “donut hole.” Medicaid may also provide long-term care services in addition to the above depending on the recipient’s circumstances.
Unless Social Security determines that you are disabled, you are eligible for Medicare when you turn 65. Much of the premium has been paid if you have worked the requisite number of quarters and contributed to Social Security. As a Medicare beneficiary (or even if you are not) you may be eligible for Medicaid if you have limited income and resources.
Ralph S. Robbins, is a Certified Financial Planner, specializing in investment strategies, estate planning and public benefit eligibility for seniors.
An elderly woman unable to get out of a very hot bath died from severe burns.
Evelyn Attwell (78) was trapped in the scalding bath at her home in Dublin as her daughter desperately tried to break down the locked bathroom door.
“I’m stuck. The water’s too hot,” she called to her daughter Vivienne Thompson, who tried to rescue her.
Mrs Attwell, who had seven daughters, died a week later at the National Burns Unit at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.
A post-mortem found she died of multi-organ failure due to “thermal burns as a result of partial immersion in hot bath water” at her home in Brookwood Rise, Artane.
Dublin City Coroner Dr Brian Farrell delivered a verdict of accidental death. Extending his sympathy to her family following the “very tragic occurrence”, Dr Farrell said it appeared she must have slipped into the bath.
In a statement to the coroner’s court, Ms Thompson said her mother appeared to be suffering from early-onset dementia and was scheduled to undergo a medical scan for the condition the day after the accident happened.
Ms Thompson visited her mother on the afternoon of October 25 last year and brought her dinner. Mrs Attwell was preparing for the hospital visit and went upstairs for a bath. After 10 or 15 minutes, Ms Thompson heard her mother calling her. She went upstairs and heard her mother calling through the locked door.
Ms Thompson said she tried to force the door open but it was a new door and she couldn’t get it open. She sent her daughter for help and called the fire brigade.
Her mother was “still talking” to her for a few minutes before falling unconscious. When the fire brigade arrived and broke in the door, she was found lying widthways in the bath with her legs out. The paramedics revived her and she became “fully alert”. She spoke with her daughter on the ambulance trip to Beaumont Hospital.
Mrs Attwell was transferred two hours later to St James’s Hospital burns unit, where she died on November 2.
Family members told the coroner in court that Mrs Attwell used to complain of feeling “a little bit dizzy” from time to time. The family were concerned that she had been declining cognitively over the previous eight months.
The family did not know how the bath water became too hot. The coroner said she must not have put any cold water into the bath and she may have slipped into the bath while preparing it.
hnews@herald.ie
The following post was originally featured on the VA’s VAntage Point blog.
By Alex Horton
Rumor mills are permanent fixtures in schools, offices and wherever people congregate, and most of the time they’re pretty innocuous. But myths and rumors that deal with health–in this case Veterans health–are a serious matter that can prevent qualified Vets from seeking the care they both need and deserve. Many have come up in the comments section, and others I hear from the guys in my old unit.
The myths won’t die unless they are addressed publicly and clearly, so we present you with the most common we hear, and the straightforward answers they need.
Five Myths About VA Health Care
Myth Number One - I wasn’t injured in the service, so I’m not eligible for VA health care.
Status: False -
One of the most common myths revolves around eligibility for health care at VA. Many think that you have to first establish a disability rating before you can start to make appointments, see doctors and receive medication. That is not the case. If you served in the military, even during peace time, and were honorably discharged, you likely qualify for VA care. Even if you don’t meet those requirements, special circumstances might apply, like Vietnam service, exposure to Agent Orange and household income. The best way to find out if you qualify is to submit an application for health benefits. You can fill one out online or at a VA Medical Center. If you are an Iraq or Afghanistan Veteran, there are special combat Veteran benefits from VA, like temporary access to dental care and guaranteed access to Priority 6 for five years (unless you are eligible for a higher priority group). See the priority enrollment groups here.
Also, if new regulations are established regarding health benefits, VA will automatically reassess your case if it’s on file.
Read more: http://militaryadvantage.military.com/2010/11/busting-myths-about-va-health-care/
MilitaryAdvantage.Military.com
From the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Elderly people (that is, people aged 65 years and older) are more prone to heat stress than younger people for several reasons:
- Elderly people do not adjust as well as young people to sudden changes in temperature.
- They are more likely to have a chronic medical condition that changes normal body responses to heat.
- They are more likely to take prescription medicines that impair the body’s ability to regulate its temperature or that inhibit perspiration.
Heat Stroke
Heat stroke is the most serious heat-related illness. It occurs when the body becomes unable to control its temperature: the body’s temperature rises rapidly, the body loses its ability to sweat, and it is unable to cool down. Body temperatures rise to 106°F or higher within 10 to 15 minutes. Heat stroke can cause death or permanent disability if emergency treatment is not provided.
Continue reading Heat Stress in the Elderly
Recent reports allege that security officials at a Florida airport forced a 95-year-old woman with cancer to remove her adult diaper as part of a security pat-down.
While this is an extreme example, some medical equipment and assistive devices– such as pacemakers, wheelchairs and oxygen tanks – can hinder airport security screening procedures.
In response to the incident involving the adult diaper, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials released this statement: “While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, the TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner.”
From http://www.agingcare.com. Read more…
From Medscape News
Nursing home residents who are started on a diuretic, and those who are already on a diuretic and are switched to a higher dose, have an acute surge in their fall risk.
This is according to data released here at the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) 2011 Annual Scientific Meeting.
The study results showed that the risk for falls in nursing home residents was elevated more than 2-fold within 1 day of them receiving a new prescription for a diuretic or an increase in their diuretic dosage.
The increased risk was especially pronounced with loop diuretics.
“We recommend increased surveillance for all residents for the first 2 days following a change in diuretic in order to reduce falls,” Sarah D. Berry, MD, MPH, instructor in medicine at the Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew SeniorLife, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News.
For continent residents, scheduled toileting may also be helpful because it may prevent urinary urgency secondary to a full bladder, she advised.
Full article is at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/742843
Strenuous exercise may protect brain – USATODAY.com http://t.co/Sgw1Fix via @USATODAY
Willard Wilson began his morning like any other, making his way to his bathroom for a shave in a senior’s residence in Pierrefonds, near Montreal in Quebec, Canada.
While he was getting ready to shave, the 94-year-old man lost his balance and fell into his empty bathtub.
Trying to pull himself out of the tub, he grabbed the hot water tap and accidentally turned it on.
Within seconds, hot water had scalded Wilson’s legs, buttocks, scrotum and heels.
Mild memory problems in older people are often excused as “senior moments,” but a new study has found the same changes in the brain that cause severe dementia may also be responsible for those memory lapses.
The findings contradict a long-held notion that memory loss is a normal part of aging, the U.S. team said on Wednesday.
“We don’t think that just because you are old, a problem in thinking and memory is normal and should be ignored. We think it’s an actual sign of disease,” said Robert Wilson, a researcher at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Neurology.
Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, is a fatal brain disease in which people gradually lose their memory and their ability to reason and care for themselves.
Only an autopsy can confirm the brain changes used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Short of that, most patients have to take a battery of memory tests administered by specialists.
Wilson’s findings are the latest from a long-running study of 350 Catholic nuns, priests and brothers who were given memory tests each year for up to 13 years.
When they died, their brains were examined. Pathologists looked specifically for tau, a toxic protein that forms tangles in the brain linked with Alzheimer’s disease.
They also checked for evidence of strokes and for Lewy bodies – an abnormal protein in nerve cells that can cause a form of dementia called Lewy body disease.
Patients who showed no sign of memory loss also had clean brains. In the patients with memory troubles, they tended to develop gradually, but then accelerated in the last four to five years of life.
“What we’re saying is the brain changes that are mainly responsible for Alzheimer’s and other dementias also seem to be mainly responsible for very mild early changes in memory and thinking,” Wilson said in a telephone interview.
Many experts believe Alzheimer’s starts about 10 years before the disease is diagnosed. Wilson said his findings lend more credence to that theory.
Wilson said if people are worried about memory changes, they could get tested. But individuals will have to weigh that decision carefully because currently, there are no drugs that can alter the progression of Alzheimer’s, which affects more than 26 million people globally.
Researchers are working on new ways to diagnose dementia based on protein biomarkers in blood and spinal fluids, or new imaging agents, in the hopes of developing new drugs that can keep the disease from progressing.
Article from http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2010/09/15/eline/links/20100915elin013.html and http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/WNL.0b013e3181f39adc.
Falls.
By children.
By the elderly.
For seniors, falls are associated with:
- lower-body weakness
- problems with balance and walking
- visual impairment
- chronic illness or a
- history of stroke.
Falls are the leading cause of unintentional home injury deaths, accounting for 33 percent of deaths.
According to the Home Safety Council (HSC) they account for more than 40 percent of nonfatal injuries. The two highest risk age groups are children under five and older adults over 70 years old.
Read more about Falls Are the Leading Injury-Related Cause of ER Visits.
Falls Are the Leading Injury-Related Cause of ER Visits
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