Obama Says US Must Step Up Care For Aging Americans

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

Jul 13, 12:18 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama warned Monday of an increasing urgency for the U.S. to care for older Americans as millions of baby boomers head into their golden years.

At a White House conference on aging, Obama called on the nation to take proactive steps to address rising costs, protect Social Security, train more home health care workers and help seniors remain active contributors to their communities. He said every day, almost 10,000 Americans born in the aftermath of World War II turn 65 years old, creating a heavy load for the organizations and government agencies that help care for the elderly.

"Were going to have to work for it," Obama said. "We have to work to do more to ensure that every older American has the resources and the support they need to thrive."

Every 10 years, the White House holds a conference addressing the needs of aging Americans. Ahead of this year's summit, Obama wrote in an editorial for the AARP website about the importance of making sure that a lifetime of hard work is rewarded "with a retirement that is secure and dignified."

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_AGING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-07-13-12-18-23

[L0oniX]

1. "Raise the cap" - Bernie

[They_Live]

3. Absolutely right.

Raise The Cap.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

4. "Raise the cap" - Elmer

[meow2u3]

20. Scrap the cap is more like it

In addition, subject capital gains and other passive income above the current FICA cap to Social Security taxes. SS will never go broke that way--unless corrupt officials loot the trust fund.

[Alkene]

32. +1 n/t

[randys1]

2. 7 out of 10 Americans will need assisted living in old age, and only a FRACTION of them

will be able to afford it based on our current for profit system.

I dont have a link to this stat, I heard it from someone who had heard it on a radio show.

We not only have to INCREASE soc sec benefits, we have to nationalize assisted living care-homes for the elderly and take care of them the way other civilized countries do.

Our reason for not caring for them is the stuck on stupid idea that capitalism is so great.

It ISN'T, it is only great for a small handful

[Rozlee]

7. Hear, hear!

My husband has Alzheimer's and at least I have the resources to care for him. Others aren't as lucky. Unless a person's income level qualifies them for Medicaid, you have no recourse but to care for a loved one at home and to face crushing debt, time off from work and the fact that your loved one isn't getting the necessary care that they need. I've seen so many other caregivers in the same position I'm in who can't afford around the clock home health care or whose private insurance doesn't cover all the expenses or who don't have private insurance. Family members have to quit jobs they depend on for livelihoods, homes have to be mortgaged and loans have to be taken out. Family members get training on many aspects of caring for their aged loved ones, but often don't understand serious symptoms a nursing or medical professional would pick up. I'm a former RN myself and we're lucky to have the resources we do, but I'm overwhelmed as it is and can only imagine what the child of a parent who had to quit their job to care for them is going through, especially if they have other family members to care for. And beating yourself up over not having private insurance often doesn't help. Private insurance has a way of sometimes denying claims, knowing that time is on their side and the person covered will probably die before he/she can collect.

[Novara]

13. I gave up everything and moved across the country to care for my mom

She has Alzheimer's. And home was becoming unsafe for her so she is now in assisted living. If she outlives her money she will have to move to a medicaid facility, which will be traumatic for her and no way will she get as complete care as she is currently getting (she's in one of the best facilities in the area).

Assisted living facilities need to be subsidized by our taxes. It's incredibly expensive to take care of people. Home health care workers are even more expensive. It's ridiculous.

[Rozlee]

35. I know that was hard for you.

And it's easy to run out of money. I know a family that sold their father's $305,000 home to afford his nursing home bill and went broke after 6 years. It's easy to do with nursing home costs of between 4,500 a month and up. An Alzheimer's patient can live anywhere from two years to ten or more after diagnosis, depending on the aggressiveness of his dementia. Selling a home usually isn't an option if a remaining spouse needs it for a roof over their head.

[Nay]

8. Exactly. NO amount of cap raising, savings help, fakey long-term-care insurance, etc.,

will enable elders to afford assisted living/Alzeimer's care in old age. The for-profit model costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, FFS! Nationalization is the only solution.

[jwirr]

9. Nationalize assisted living care-homes. I am not sure what you mean by that? Are you talking

about nursing homes, foster homes, special programs in section 8 housing and other housing? What about care in their own homes?

In MN we have all of these types of care - some are privately owned and some are government owned. All are required to follow the same rules of care. And the state also determines the level of pay that they are paid. As a social worker for both the disabled and the elderly it was my job to visit these facilities and make sure they were doing what they got paid for. In the case of my daughter who is in a foster care facility not only the family as legal guardian but also the social worker supervise the care of these privately owned facilities. I myself get home health care from a private care company and it is very well supervised.

I do not think it is a matter of who owns the facility - it is more how the state regulates the facilities and carries out the oversight. Unfortunately many states do not do this so the regulations should come from the federal government.

[randys1]

11. You cant have for profit involved in anything that is a must have like healthcare or assisted living

which is a facet of healthcare.

Regulations may resolve the level of care issues, although I have heard horror stories about horrible conditions in rest homes, but at the end of the day we cant have for profit involved in assisted living for the same reason we cant have for profit hospitals unless they cater to rich people, private rooms, etc.

If you have no money and are 80 yrs old and need assisted living, a facility with around the clock care, where do you go?

How do you afford anything at all, let alone a quality place?

[jwirr]

16. I think the for profit issue is handled here in MN by the fact that the state also regulates the

amount they pay for those services. The profit that they can make is dependent on what the state wants to pay. Take it or leave it. And they do pay enough that the companies do not go out of business and have good quality workers.

We have both a private and a public nursing home - both take Medicaid patients. And since my mother fits you description I know that she got the same care as the others.

Her care was paid for with her Social Security check and Medicaid. This would have covered her care in any type of facility or to be able to stay at home.

Even if she didn't have any social security then she would have been even more eligible for Medicaid.

[Sunlei]

27. I see what you mean, 1,000s of 'for profit' assisted living places open & many will be deathcamps

[jwirr]

31. My point is that they will not become that if the state they are in takes responsibility for

regulating them and setting their pay levels. Our private and public facilities are paid the same amount and have to follow the same regulations. And it works.

My mother lived in the private nursing home and my daughter lives in a private foster home for adult disabled persons. As I said I was one of the persons who monitored these facilities and we did not just go once a year. All screening for every person in the facility was done at the facility and we could and did walk in when ever we wanted to. Also one of the rules of all the facilities was that families could show up at any time - day or night and could not be told they could not visit. That allowed us to have another layer of supervision.

At least in my state you are wrong. But I also know that many states have only one goals - to cut everything they can get their hands on. There nothing will work.

[raccoon]

5. Medicare for all would be great for those who might be caring for older Americans. nt

[NCjack]

6. Mr President: Stop the unfair trade. nt

[jwirr]

10. Bingo. He can talk all he wants about the affordability of healthcare but as long as TPP contains

the part that will raise the cost of medicines around the world he is just talking

[udbcrzy2]

12. The need for more not-for-profit elder care homes

The care if much better and more satisfying to the resident in a not-for-profit home. The waiting lists to get into these facilities are long (like years). The usual nursing home is very expensive, care is not that great (under staffed = not enough CNA's) and sometimes the food is really horrible. These for-profit homes make loads of money too.

[mainer]

14. How about we find a cure for Alzheimer's?

That would be money WELL spent and would cut the need for a lot of nursing home care.

[PasadenaTrudy]

24. People without Alzheimer's

live in them too.

[mainer]

25. But you can live with Alzheimer's for many years

while remaining physically healthy. Imagine if we could keep Alzheimer's patients out of nursing homes, leaving more available beds for the physically infirm? That would help everyone.

[PasadenaTrudy]

26. True that n/t

[CharlotteVale]

15. And yet he didn't mention raising SS or lifting the cap?!?

[jwirr]

17. Especially lifting the cap.

[Sunlei]

29. so someone who makes a billion in income gets a guaranteed 50k a month ss check?

[jwirr]

30. Lifting the cap does not mean that. Each of us pay a percentage into Social Security from our

income but the rich do not have to do that. They only pay on their income up to a certain income (not sure how much it is now) and then they get to stop paying. Lifting the cap merely would raise the place where they could stop paying.

Example: You make $100 and pay $15 dollars into social security. I make $4000 and only have to pay social security on $1000 of it. If the cap is raised I will have to pay on $3000 of my income.

Now I do understand what you are saying - that because I am paying more in I should be able to take more out. And you are right - we need to make sure that does not cause troubles. I am sure that we could also put a cap on how much anyone can take out if it was necessary.

Since you object to a cap I am curious how you would fix the program?

[Recursion]

33. The payouts are based on what you paid in, so lifting the cap would result in $50K monthly payments

To make it actuarially matter, we would need to lift the cap and further means test benefits.

[jwirr]

34. Is that worse than ending social security when we live in a country that has no other way of

taking care of it elderly and disabled? You got a better plan?

[Recursion]

36. Social Security does not have a problem, so I don't think it needs a solution

Even the doom and gloom about running out of money in 50 years is based on the notion that growth will not increase during that time; if that's the case we have much bigger problems.

[jwirr]

37. And the increase in baby boomers retirement is not going to have any effect? The kinds of

problem that we cannot control - like climate change - are not going to allow us to have the growth you are talking about.

I have lived long enough that I have seen the baby boomers move step by step through our history. For each event (kindergarten, grade school, high school, college etc. we have had to adjust to the needs. Build new schools, provide more jobs and now provide for their retirement. The problem is that jobs today do not pay what they used to and there are less workers supporting the growing number of boomers. Hopefully there will be enough to provide for their needs. But I am not sure.

I tend to believe that Social Security is not in as bad a trouble as everyone thinks but I would rather see the cap raised than cuts to the retirees and the disabled on it.

[Recursion]

38. The baby boom is why we front-loaded all that debt in the Trust Fund

The Trust Fund is now sitting on $2.6 trillion in bonds which will essentially cover the Baby Boom's retirement, at which point Gen X will be sitting pretty as the much-more-numerous Millennials pay for our retirement. That $2.6 trillion can be redeemed by new borrowing, dollar for dollar, which because it is redeeming old bonds will not affect total debt. It was actually a pretty decent plan as these things go, as long as we don't fall for the attempts to gut it.

[jwirr]

39. Thank you. I assumed that the trust fund was to be left alone regardless.

[djean111]

19. Because when the TPP kicks in, they sure won't be able to afford the medicine.

I think I just need to stop clicking on anything with Obama's name in the header.

[jtuck004]

21. Another 640,000 Drop Out of the Labor Force Causing Unemployment Rate Decline

The June employment report brings some OMG, jaw dropping, are you kidding me numbers. Over 640,000 dropped out of the labor force. As a result, the unemployment rate declined two tenths of a percentage point to 5.3%. The labor participation rate dropped by -0.3 percentage points to 62.6%. This new low of a labor participation rate has not seen since October 1977 when women and minorities were still were not in the workforce extensively. While the United States does have baby boomers entering retirement, these figures are horrific.
...
To see the labor participation rate cannot be explained away by retiring baby boomers, let's look at the rate for prime working years. Below is a graph of the labor participation rate for those between the ages of 25 to 54. The rate is 80.8%, a value not seen since November 1984, discounting times past the great recession when the American work experience collapsed.
...

Some good graphs at link below

...
The civilian labor force, which consists of the employed and the officially unemployed, decreased by -432 thousand this month. The civilian labor force has grown by 1,337,000 over the past year. This is another head shaking figure. New workers enter the labor force every day from increased population inside the United States and immigration, both legal and illegal. So the decline here implies people are dropping out of the labor force as well.
...
Within the CPS survey is how many people who are considered not in the labor force who report they want a job now. It is a direct survey question. The Census asks people who are not being counted in the unemployment statistics and official unemployment rate if they want a job. The number who answer yes currently stands at 6,076,000, a very large number of people. Those who are not counted yet report they want a job includes the discouraged workers and marginally attached and is seasonally adjusted. This figure has barely budged from a year ago, only a -1.1% decrease. For the month, those not in the labor force stating they want a job increased by 18,000. This figure should drop along with the unemployment rate, which it clearly isn't.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/another-640000-drop-out-labor-force-causing-unemployment-rate-decline-5778

No, not another OP. My point is that if you can't provide opportunity to thrive for people in their peak working years when the services and support needed are so much less, there isn't a chance in hell you are going to do it for the people who cost more and are more difficult to serve.

Dangling shiny things to pass the time, give the herd something to look at so they don't stampede.

[valerief]

22. Whatever it will be, it won't involve RICH PEOPLE and CORPORATE PERSONS paying fair effective taxes.

Cuz, you know, America and freedumb and shit.

[hollowdweller]

23. I think a huge catastrophe is looming

I think we are coming very close to seeing what happens when you expect underpaid workers to go into old age with no defined pensions and years and years of no healthcare.

I think Obamacare will help but won't eliminate the cost of some people never having health insurance.

20 years ago at least we should have been moving to not only universal health care but massive screening for conditions that would prevent chronic disease.

Social Security should have been strengthened or another plan developed to help those with no pensions.

I feel currently we are coming out of a phase where we could not work together to solve our problems as a country due to the fear of socialisim being cried out.

However we will not escape some of the cost from our vacillating

[Ilsa]

28. Yep. Not enough ice floes for the GOP to put us on.

Global climate change, etc.

And Long term care insurance is a scam.