From the Web by Elaine Steward #20

Hi again from Elaine Steward! Following, is my most recent list of things which may be of general interest to us retirees. If have something you’d like to share, please post it to the comments section at the end of this blog.

If you, friends, or family, need step-by-step computer/internet instructions, go to www.teachparents.tech.org for video instructions. The site is designed for kids to provide help to parents. It’s really very cute as well as informative.

If you are a member of AARP and want to have fun, serve, and learn all at one time, you're invited to join AARP and [their] band of volunteers to be a goodwill ambassador at the 2011 Life@50+ in Los Angeles convention, AARP's National Event & Expo. To sign up, go to www.aarp.org/giving-back/volunteering/info-03-2011/volunteers-needed-for-life-ca.html?cmp=NLC-STO-031511-CA-LAEvntVolRec

For a free website which will help you and/or your family construct its story, take a look at www.proust.com/

For more cautions on reverse mortgages, see www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/your-money/12money.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

For a website which collects recipes, go to foodily.com/ . A nice feature is that there is a WITHOUT (salt, gluten, peanuts, etc) field as part of the search.

If you know any woman currently undergoing chemotherapy, please pass the word to her that there is a cleaning service that provides FREE housecleaning - once per month for 4 months while she is in treatment. All she has to do is sign up and have her doctor fax a note confirming the treatment. Cleaning for a Reason will have a participating maid service in her zip code area arrange for the service. www.cleaningforareason.org//

Free help with tax filing is available for low to middle income people. For help, go to www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=107626,00.html

For a free downloadable booklet on how to use social media (e.g, facebook) to improve one’s health, go to www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/ToolsTemplates/SocialMediaToolkit_BM.pdf

For a site which tries to predict trends in electronics, “Their blog conducts surveys and examines whether or not the market will be embracing those newest trends en masse” go to shop.retrevo.com/

If you worked in a job with health insurance after the age of 65, and are now retiring, there are deadlines for signing up for the rest of your Medicare benefits. For information. Go to www.mymedicarematters.org/ask_the_expert.asp

If you have a dog, perhaps you’d like to subscribe to the Woof Report, a weekly newsletter which covers such things as training tips, dog accessories, etc. Go to www.woofreport.com/

A coalition of consumer groups and health care providers has launched a website to help understand the Affordable Care Act. Go to www.healthcareandyou.org/ Members of the coalition are AARP; The American Academy of Family Physicians; The American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network; The American College of Physicians; The American Medical Association; The American Nurses Association; The Catholic Health Association; and The National Community Pharmacists Association

“…the way we make decisions changes on a fundamental, physiological level as we age. The brain begins to approach its tasks differently, and once we understand the changes, we can learn to work with them.” For more, go to newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/why-it-takes-so-long-to-decide/?nl=health&emc=healthupdateema10

For free (up to 2 gigabytes)on-line back-up for your computer, smartphone, etc files, go to www.backupify.com/

1) From AARP – bulletin.aarp.org

For a good question-and-answer on Social Security, go to www.aarp.org/work/social-security/info-12-2010/top-25-social-security-questions.html?cmp=NLC-WBLTR-CTRL-031111-FT1-80&USEG_ID=6388998522

Before deciding that a reverse mortgage is the right thing for you, read the cautions at www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-02-2011/reverse-mortgages.html?cmp=NLC-MONY-CTRL-030911-F2t-7

For a list of tips and myths on saving on gasoline, go to www.aarp.org/money/budgeting-saving/info-07-2009/ask_sid_tips_and_myths_on_saving_gas.html?cmp=NLC-WBLTR-CTRL-031811-F2-4&USEG_ID=6388998522


2) From Aging in Stride – www.aginginstride.org

For recommendations on how to optimize brain health and function, go to enews.aginginstride.org/pub.48/issue.1533/article.6372/

3) From California Healthline – www.californiahealthline.org/

Appeals Court To Speed Up Review of Health Reform Law Ruling On [11 March] the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said it will grant a request by the Obama administration to expedite the appeal of a federal judge's ruling against the federal health reform law, the AP/USA Today reports.

California HMOs Score Well for Meeting Care Quality Standards Most large HMOs in California received high marks for overall quality of care and patient satisfaction, but some health plans still fell short in certain areas, according to the state's 2011 Health Care Quality Report Card, the Sacramento Bee reports.

New State Plan Outlines Strategies for Tackling Alzheimer's Disease On [9 March] Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), state officials and advocates released a new statewide plan that aims to address the growing challenges of Alzheimer's disease, the Sacramento Bee reports (Creamer, Sacramento Bee, 3/9). A task force led by the Alzheimer's Association, the California Health and Human Services Agency and CHHS' Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Advisory Committee developed the 10-year plan (Lavelle, San Diego Union-Tribune, 3/9)

Study: Workplace Wellness Programs Cut Health Costs Businesses that offer wellness programs to employees can slow the growth rate of health care costs by 15%, according to a Highmark study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion. Researchers said wellness program participants might pursue preventive care services more frequently than nonparticipants because wellness programs often provide information about such services.

DOJ: Ruling Against Reform Should Not Halt its Rollout [The week of 28 Feb], the Department of Justice sent a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson arguing that the 26 states in the multistate lawsuit challenging the federal health reform law should not have expected Vinson to halt implementation of the overhaul because the individual mandate applies to only 10 of the law's 450 provisions. DOJ said that halting implementation would complicate the nation's health care system because many overhaul provisions already have taken effect.

Questions Raised About Oversight of Concierge-Style Health Providers As some California health care providers move to a concierge-style direct primary care model, questions have emerged about how the state should regulate such services, the Los Angeles Daily Journal reports.

CBO Estimates Repeal of Health Reform Would Add $210B to U.S. Deficit A new Congressional Budget Office report states that repealing the health reform law would add $210 billion to the federal deficit between 2012 and 2021. The report says implementing the overhaul would save the government $124 billion between 2010 and 2019. Reuters.

4) From Carepages – www.carepages.com

For helpful advice on traveling with cancer, go to www.carepages.com/cancer/cancer-and-travel-precautions.html?xid=nl_EverydayCaringFromCarePages_20110224

5) I do hope you are all following the (USC) Dean’s Council on Health Reform at www.healthreform.usc.edu/ It is a very rich site

6) From iHealthBeat - www.ihealthbeat.org/

Online Messaging Shown To Improve Follow-Up Care for Depression Online messaging can deliver efficient and effective follow-up care for patients with depression, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Healthcare IT News reports.

HHS Seeks To Allow State Data Mining for Medicaid Fraud HHS' Office of Inspector General has proposed a rule that would allow states to use federal funding to mine state Medicaid claims data in an effort to uncover fraud. Currently, state Medicaid fraud control units are prohibited from using federal funds for such purposes. According to OIG, data mining is an effective way to root out fraud. Modern Healthcare, Health Data Management.

Researchers Unveil Platform To Kick Off Contest for Health Apps Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School recently announced the public release of an interoperability platform and interface designed to support the development of innovative health-related Web applications, Modern Healthcare

Survey: Most Patients Want Online Access to Their Physician's Office Seventy-three percent of respondents to a new Intuit Health survey said they would like to have an online connection to their physician's office. Patients would use such connections to obtain their laboratory results or request appointments. InformationWeek, Healthcare IT News.

After Jeopardy!, IBM Moves Supercomputer on to Medical Research IBM and Nuance, a speech-recognition products vendor, have announced a five-year research agreement to explore ways for the health care industry to tap into the capabilities of IBM's Watson supercomputer, InformationWeek reports.

7) From Kaiser Health News – www.kaiserhealthnews.org/

Health Law Waivers Scorecard: Yes: 1,040. No: 79. The Obama administration Tuesday answered Republican lawmakers seeking to know how many employers and health care providers have been refused waivers from certain requirements of the federal health care overhaul. The answer: 79 as of late February, according to documents released this week by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. By comparison, 1,040 entities received the waivers. Those denied waivers include Mesa Air Group and local branches of the Teamsters and United Food and Commercial Workers unions (Wall Street Journal: Washington Wire, Adamy, 3/15).

The Informed Patient: New Efforts To Simplify End-Of-Life Care Wishes The programs are known as Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or Polst. They are meant to complement advance directives, sometimes known as living wills, in which people state in broad terms how much medical intervention they will want when their condition no longer allows them to communicate. A Polst, which is signed by both the patient and the doctor, spells out such choices as whether a patient wants to be on a mechanical breathing machine or feeding tube and receive antibiotics (Wall Street Journal, Landro, 3/15).

Lifting The Veil On Medical Costs Americans are increasingly responsible for health-care expenses, yet it's nearly impossible to comparison-shop for a doctor, test or procedure. Castlight Health Inc. aims to change that by bringing the online-shopping revolution to the giant, opaque health-care industry. … "If you have diabetes, we can help you plan all your treatment for the whole year, so you know what it's going to cost," says Chief Executive Giovanni Colella, who co-founded the company in 2008 (Wall Street Journal, Richmond, 3/14).

Insuring Your Health: Some Medical Practices Move To Monthly Membership Fees For Patients In her latest consumer column, Michelle Andrews writes: “Just about everyone agrees that the way we pay for primary care needs fixing. Under the current insurance model, doctors get paid for procedures and tests rather than for time spent with patients, which makes doctors and patients alike unhappy and increases costs. Now some medical practices are sidelining health insurers entirely, instead charging patients a moderate membership fee each month. The approach gets a nod in the health overhaul law. But not everyone agrees it's the right way to go” (Kaiser Health News, Andrews, 7/8).

Obama Offers States More Flexibility In Health-Care Law President Obama sought to defuse criticism of the new health-care overhaul Monday by saying he is willing to give states an earlier opportunity to opt out of certain key requirements - but only if they can find their own ways to accomplish the law's goals (The Washington Post, Goldstein and Balz, 3/1).

Shutdown Preparations Begin Agencies throughout the government are scrambling to figure out how to handle a government shutdown, with a potential closure as soon as March 5 prompting a review of which activities are essential and which aren't (The Wall Street Journal, Bendavid and Paletta, 2/25).

States Pushing Managed Long-Term Care For Elderly And Disabled Medicaid Patients Kaiser Health News staff writer Phil Galewitz, in collaboration with USA Today, reports: “Desperate to rein in rising Medicaid costs, Tennessee last year became the sixth state to require its frailest and costliest patients — the elderly and disabled who need long-term care — to enroll in managed care plans. At least 10 other states, including Florida, Maryland, New Jersey and Rhode Island, are considering introducing or expanding the use of managed long-term care. The trend is sparking opposition from the nursing home industry and raising some concerns from AARP and other patient advocates (Kaiser Health News, Galewitz, 2/22).

8) From My Medicare Matters – www.mymedicarecommunity.org/

My Medicare Matters offers Webinars (live on-line training) for those who are Medicare advocates. If you are interested in being notified of training sessions, please contact me at esslady@gmail.com

9) From NCOA – www.ncoa.org

For a list of NCOA’s public policy priorities for the 112th Congress, go to www.ncoa.org/public-policy/ncoa-public-policy-priorities.html

If you worked in a job with health insurance after the age of 65, and are now retiring, there are deadlines for signing up for the rest of your Medicare benefits. For information. Go to www.mymedicarematters.org/ask_the_expert.asp


10) From The New York Times – nytdirect@nytimes.com

For more cautions on reverse mortgages, see www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/your-money/12money.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

For guidance on selecting an executor for your estate, go to www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/business/retirementspecial/03EXEC.html?tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print

Long-Term Care Needs Changes, Officials Say WASHINGTON — One of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s legacies in the new health care law, intended to allow the chronically ill and people with disabilities to continue living in their homes, is too costly to survive without major changes, Obama administration officials now say.