What Do Baby Boomer, Hidden Camera & Nursing Home Abuse Have In Common?
In case you have been living in a cave, the reality is that the baby boomer generation is surging toward retirement age and the fact that there is a growing need to find a bigger work force to tend to the millions of boomers who will in the not too distant future need ongoing care due to age, illness or a combination of both. Baby Boomers will be facing a whole host of physical and mental frailties.
There will be huge increase in America’s elderly population in the next few decades. The labor pool that has traditionally cared for these people made up mainly of woman from their mid-20s to mid-50s will hardly grow at all which will compound the problem of an existing work force that is earning low wages and has a high turnover rate.
Statistics prove that nearly 3 million people work in direct-care jobs who work mainly with the elderly as nursing assistants, home health aids and personal care aids.
Leading experts say that 1 million more health care workers will be needed in the next decade. And it gets worse. 3 million more workers will be needed by 2030 when all surviving members of the 78 million strong baby boomer generation will be older than 65!
Wages for direct-care workers as of 2005 averaged less than $10.00/hr. and one quarter or these workers have no health insurance! To make matters worse the Supreme Court as of summer 2007 ruled unanimously that the nation’s 1 million home-care workers are Not entitled to overtime pay under federal law. This is a ticking time bomb for the millions of senior baby boomers who want to live at home instead of institutions.
Direct-care workers will be desperately sought after and with those low wages, many undesirable people will be hired like ex-criminals, thieves, etc. Baby Boomers will be robbed blind of their money and possessions as direct-care workers look at baby boomers as the haves and themselves as the have not’s. Not only that but the boomers will not get the care needed to keep them alive.
Many facilities fail to provide the services necessary for patients to avoid physical harm, mental anguish or mental illness.
Official investigate nearly 4,500 nursing home abuse cases each year and the count keeps going up. The main reason is poor or no staff training or staff that has not been checked for having criminal backgrounds.
The biggest case found for nursing home abuse to date is an East Peoria nursing home that was fine $100,000 on Friday, 7-13-2007 for neglect and faulty care of mentally ill and elderly patients. As a result, three patients and two workers were arrested.
Police raided the East Peoria Gardens Healthcare Center in April and found evidence that mentally ill patients were out of control and elderly patients tormented.
In this investigation officials found numerous tell tale signs that elderly and mentally ill residents were falling and fatally injured, improper diagnosis, mentally ill patients choking to death on food. Numerous patients falling and later dieing from complications without and precautions put in place. In addition to nursing home patient neglect seven patients were admitted with criminal records after failing to do background checks.
Many families are now suspecting elder and baby boomer abuse and turning to technology such as advanced hidden cameras that will aid them in making sure their loved one(s) are being cared for properly by direct-care workers. But most are not.
Nanny Cameras now called Granny Cams or Hidden Cams are getting more and more sophisticated in catching nursing home abuse. Once the evidence is collected the authorities can be alerted and the workers sent to jail or imprisoned. Read more
The Boomers are Coming - So Be Prepared
The first wave of the Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, will turn 65 in 2011. The first wave of 3.4 million gradually increases to 4.0 million per year. The initial impacts range from replacing bifocals with progressive lenses to the pharmacy staff greeting you on a first name basis.
Other changes coming our way can be seen without progressive lenses. Our social insurance programs are heading for trouble and we Boomers need to face that reality. The first social insurance program to run into trouble isn’t Social Security; it is Medicare.
Let’s take a look at the various funding sources. Part A which provides limited hospitalization coverage is paid through payroll tax deductions. Part A expenses exceeded payroll tax collections is 2005 and will continue until the problem is addressed.
The other major Medicare programs, Part B for doctor’s visits and outpatient services, and Part D prescription drugs, are on a pay-as-you-go system. Retirees pay 25% through premiums and the Federal government pays 75%. Looking out of the top of my lenses I can see a problem. It looks like 78 million aging Baby Boomers.
One of the changes buried in the legislation that gave us Medicare’s prescription drug program was a tiered pricing for Part B. The good news is that it only hits the wealthy. Who are the wealthy? Right now they are single retiree’s earning in excess of $80,000 per year or a married couple earning $160,000. There is some bad news. This social insurance program is now based on ability to pay and the Federal government’s definition of “wealthy” which has a tendency to change based on revenue needs.
Social Security is heading for a similar problem but it doesn’t hit us until 2017 when payroll tax collections are exceeded by Social Security payments. The Social Security and Medicare Trust was described by the Office of Management and Budgets as “claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, reducing benefits, or other expenditures.” Read more
Boomers Ready to Launch Data
Additional data from “Boomers Ready to Launch” about individuals born in 1946.
31% plan to apply for Social Security when they turn 62, and 32 percent say they will wait until age 66 or beyond when they can receive full benefits.
68% say they have employee or retiree health insurance.
47% are covered by a defined benefit plan, 50 percent have a 401(k), 50 percent have an IRA.
38% own stocks, and 38 percent have mutual funds.
22% have long-term care insurance.
85% own their own home with an average value of $297,900.
16% would consider a reverse mortgage primarily to take care of their own long-term care needs and costs; 74 percent are aware that they are eligible at age 62 to apply for a federally backed reverse mortgage.
25% say they plan to move to another area for retirement.
Full story Chicago Sun Times.
New drug curbs age-related macular degeneration for Baby Boomers
From the CBC
An experimental drug shows promise for people at high risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration, a condition that causes vision loss in older people, researchers say.
Japanese and Harvard researchers found that endostatin significantly reduced or completely halted the abnormal growth of blood vessels within the eyes in tests on mice.
Advanced age-related macular degeneration is an age-related, degenerative disease of the macula, a small area at the centre of the retina. The overgrowth of blood vessels into the retina can lead to central vision loss, preventing sufferers from seeing fine details. It can also lead to blindness.
Researchers separated mice into two groups — one group of normal mice naturally produced endostatin, a protein in collagen, while the other group had endostatin removed in lab experiments.
Using lasers, researchers induced new blood vessel growth in the edge of the retinas of all the mice, simulating age-related macular degeneration. The mice that had had the endostatin removed were three times as likely to develop the degenerative eye disease.
Researchers then gave endostatin to both groups of mice. In the group that had lacked the substance, the number of abnormal blood vessels was reduced to normal levels, according to the researchers. In the group that had naturally occurring endostatin, abnormal blood vessel growth could no longer be found.
“With Baby Boomers reaching advanced ages, new treatments are desperately needed to keep age-related macular degeneration from becoming a national epidemic,” said Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology journal, in a release.
“This research provides hope for those at risk for blindness, and it gives everyone another glimpse of how investments in molecular biology will ultimately pay off in terms of new treatments and cures.”
More than one-third of Canadians between the ages of 55 and 74 develop age-related macular degeneration and nearly 40% of Canadians over the age of 75 develop the condition, according to Age-Related Macular Degeneration Canada.
The study is published in the December 2007 issue of the journal of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology.
