Please click here for invitational flyer.
Pease click here for additional planned presentations.
May 31, 2007 - Save the Date: 1st Annual Geriatric Mental Health Alliance Conference. Please join fellow Alliance members from around the state for our first annual conference entitled “Geriatric Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities Across the Horizon” on May 31, 2007 from 10:00-4:00pm at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Steve Bartels, MD, MS, Professor of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School, will be the keynote speaker. Dr. Bartels served as a consultant to the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health's Subcommittee on Older Adults, and he is a past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. More details to follow.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Upcoming Events
March 8, 2007 – Symposium on The Comprehensive Approach to Dementia The Montefiore Medical Center is sponsoring their 11th annual dementia symposium entitled “The Comprehensive Approach to Dementia: A Practical Update for Practitioners in Mental Health, Primary Care and Long Term Care Settings” on March 8, 2007 at The New York Academy of Medicine. GMHA members may attend for a reduced fee of $25 Please click here for more information.
April 18, 2007 – Save the Date: Conference on Advanced Dementia The Schervier Center for Research in Geriatric Care is sponsoring a conference entitled “Advanced Dementia as a Terminal Illness: Translating Theory into Everyday Practice” on April 18, 2007. The keynote speaker is Ladislav Volicer, an expert in dementia care. Please click here for more information.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We Will Miss Yilo Cheng
Yilo Cheng, founder and former Chair of the Asian American Geriatric Mental Health Alliance, died on Monday. His passing is a great loss for the Asian human service community and for those of us who had the privilege of knowing him and working with him. He was dedicated to advocating for the needs of Asian elders with mental health problems and had a great skill at bringing together professionals, advocates, academics, and researchers to build consensus. His energy and compassion impacted many. He will be greatly missed.
There will be a memorial service for Yilo this Saturday, 2/10/07 at 2:00 pm.
The location of the service is at the Fairlawn Community Church:
10-10 Maxwell Place
Fairlawn, NJ 07410
http://www.flccnj.com/index e.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NYC Executive Deputy Commissioner for Mental Hygiene Resigns
Dr. Lloyd Sederer announced his resignation effective April 27. He has been a creative commissioner who introduced some important new ideas to NYC DOHMH. His focus on data-driven policy and planning and to the use of a public health model resulted in including significant change in the fundamental concept of the role of a public mental health authority. We appreciate the work that he did to improve the lives of older adults with mental disorders in NYC such as the depression screening and treatment initiative for older adults, a collaborative venture with the Department for the Aging. We look forward to working with him over the next few months and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Winter 2007 Issue of Salud Mental was dedicated to Mental Health and Latino Older Adults. Several Alliance members published articles in the issue. To read the issue, please go to the Salud Mental website.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Presentations
The Geriatric Mental Health Alliance is seeking proposals to present at our first annual conference in New York City on May 31, 2007. We are looking for presentations on evidence based and other state of the art practices, promising practices, and innovative service models. We hope you will share your expertise by submitting a proposal. The deadline for submission is March 1, 2007. For more information and the proposal form, please click here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact Sheets on Long-Term Care
The Georgetown University Long-Term Care Financing Project has released two new fact sheets on long term care: Medicare and Long-term Care and Medicaid’s Spousal Impoverishment Protections. They have also updated their national long-term care spending estimates.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the News
Bush’s Medicare Budget Would Raise Premiums
From the NY Times
By Robert Pear
February 4, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — More and more Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay higher premiums for coverage of prescription drugs and doctors’ services under President Bush’s 2008 budget, to be unveiled on Monday.
Single people with annual incomes over $80,000 and married couples with incomes over $160,000 already have to pay higher premiums for the part of Medicare that covers doctors’ services. The income thresholds rise with inflation.
Budget documents show that Mr. Bush will propose a similar surcharge on premiums for Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit. In addition, the president will ask Congress to “eliminate annual indexing of income thresholds,” so that more people would eventually have to pay the higher premiums. The proposal, expected to raise $10 billion over the next five years, is one of many advanced by Mr. Bush in a $2.8 trillion budget that aims to eliminate the deficit by 2012.
In his budget request, Mr. Bush expresses alarm about what he calls “the unsustainable growth of federal entitlement programs,” and he proposes savings in Medicare and Medicaid that far surpass what he or any other president has sought. The president contends that he can make the rule changes without any action by Congress. But Congress could try to block some or all of the changes.
Democrats immediately denounced the proposals. “This is exactly the wrong approach,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who cited the proposals as evidence of what she called “the president’s misplaced priorities.”
Many Republicans like the idea of an “income-related premium,” saying affluent beneficiaries can afford to pay a larger share of Medicare’s costs. Democrats are divided. Some see it as a progressive way to finance the program. But others say it is fundamentally at odds with the idea of social insurance, and they fear that it could prompt some wealthy people to leave Medicare.
Administration officials said earlier this week that Mr. Bush would ask Congress to squeeze more than $70 billion from Medicare and Medicaid over five years. But the budget documents show that the actual figure is much larger: $101.5 billion of savings over five years.
The president’s budget includes legislative proposals that would save $78.6 billion over the next five years — $65.6 billion in Medicare and $13 billion in Medicaid.
In addition, the budget documents say that Mr. Bush will propose changes in federal regulations to save $22.9 billion more over the next five years: $10.2 billion in Medicare and $12.7 billion in Medicaid. Lobbyists for hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers plan a huge campaign to kill the president’s proposals, which they say will ultimately harm beneficiaries.
Mr. Bush said his proposals would just slow the programs’ growth. “Our budget reduces Medicare’s average annual growth rate over five years to 5.6 percent, from 6.5 percent,” Mr. Bush said, while Medicaid would grow 7.1 percent a year, instead of 7.3 percent.
In the past, Mr. Bush has proposed trimming Medicare payments to health care providers for a few years, but now he proposes to make the cutbacks permanent, so that hospitals and nursing homes would never receive a full update for inflation. For the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Mr. Bush requests $5.4 billion in 2008, a reduction of $223 million, or 4 percent, from this year’s level. Beyond the current levels of spending, the White House is seeking an “additional allotment” of $5 billion over the next five years, which is less than half of what would be needed to maintain coverage for children currently enrolled.
Mr. Bush said he wanted to return the program to its “original objective” of covering children with family incomes less than twice the poverty level. Budget documents note that 16 states cover children above that level, and “one state, New Jersey, covers children up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level.” A family of four is considered poor if its annual income is less than $20,650.
In a visit to the National Institutes of Health last month, Mr. Bush said, “The N.I.H. is one of America’s greatest assets, and it needs to be nourished,” adding, “It makes sense to spend taxpayers’ money on cancer research.”
But the president’s budget for biomedical research is basically flat. He is requesting $28.9 billion for the health institutes in 2008, an increase of $232 million, or less than 1 percent. For the National Cancer Institute, Mr. Bush is requesting $4.8 billion, which is $9 million less than this year’s level.
To fight childhood obesity, Mr. Bush asks Congress to set aside $17 million for a new program to promote “healthy behavior” among adolescents. But at the same time, he asks Congress to eliminate the preventive health services block grant, which provides $99 million a year to help states prevent obesity and other chronic conditions.
Mr. Bush proposes an 18 percent cut in the Low- Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $2.2 billion to help people pay heating bills this year. At a time of high fuel prices, many lawmakers are likely to resist the cut.
-----------------------------------------------
34% of elderly use long-term care insurance in- home
From the Baltimore Sun
By the Associated Press
February 4, 2007
About 34 percent of elderly Americans claiming benefits from long-term care insurance policies last year used them to cover in-home care, according to a study released last week by an industry group.
Almost 30 percent of the payments went for assisted living costs, and about 36 percent went for nursing home care, while the total paid out last year came to $3.3 billion, according to the Washington-based American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. Jesse Slome, executive director of the association, called it "a benchmark" for the industry, saying that most studies in the past looked at how much insurance people bought rather than how they used it.
The key finding, Slome said, was that "although long- term care insurance is closely linked in consumers' minds with nursing home care," people are more likely to use their insurance for home care or assisted living.
"The bottom line is, long-term care insurance is not nursing home protection," Slome said. "Clearly, people prefer to be cared for at home, or in assisted living." The association estimates that about 8 million Americans have long-term care coverage, either through individual policies or employer-provided benefits.
People are more likely to choose nursing home care if they don't have a lot of savings, lack insurance coverage or must depend on Medicaid for their care needs, Slome said. Medicaid and state welfare programs typically don't cover in-home or assisted living care.
The study also found that the largest single claim paid to date by an insurer exceeded $875,000.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun
No comments:
Post a Comment