seniors and aging policy

For those few who still have landline phones, scammers make them ring. It has become a source of entertainment in our home to string scam callers past the bot to the frenetic-sounding call center. Or we just let the phone ring 3 times – bots have limited patience. But there is one benefit of having an actual conversation with a call center rep, as well as watching TV Medicare Advantage advertising. These unsolicited caller scripts (‘is anyone in the home between the ages of 65 and 85?’) and ads are built on stereotypes of older adults (mostly women) and the premise that they are just plain stupid. Apparently they can’t do their own research and are desperate for advice. By the way, if CMS is ‘restricting’ Medicare Advantage plan advertising, that is not yet visible to a TV viewer.  

You may know someone of Medicare age with a phone?  Since age data is widely available, and even well-organized lists are available for purchase, it is not surprising that phones of older adults ring multiple times per day. Did you know that 60% of all phone calls in the US are robocalls or spam? This, despite ostensible government efforts to prevent continued use and/or resale of the lists. Sometimes the call begun with a recording about possible additional Medicare Advantage benefits that are available. But this is sloppy scamming based on weak data – maybe the caller only knows phone numbers, despite spoofing the geographic location so that it appears to be a neighborhood call.  Next, the robocall is then transferred to a ‘supervisor’ in a noisy call center who then attempts to obtain actual age, and whether the call recipient has Medicare. Presumably after that step is successful, the so-called ‘Medicare Advantage’ pitch can begin.

It's news -- 600 nursing homes closed so what’s the strategy to fix? Rant on.  You may have read a depressing article this morning in the Wall Street Journal about the number of people stuck in hospitals with no place to go because there are no nursing homes to take them – which is the status in the UK’s National Health System (NHS).  That was an embarrassment in the UK – and this is a scandal in the US. It never should not have gotten to this point. So many factors crushed nursing homes -- Covid and Private Equity nursing home ownership were big players, followed by government strategy to undermine them. For 14 years, Florida banned new nursing home construction. The federal “Money Follows the Person” was introduced in 2005 to enable seniors to avoid them and receive Medicaid-paid services. Reauthorized repeatedly, it is now authorized through 2027. 

Caregiving and other demands of an aging population are gaining attention. In a University of Michigan national poll in November, 2022, more than half of adults aged 50-80 say they have helped an adult aged 65+ with health, personal and other types of care needs. Another study noted that the average family caregiver is a baby boomer woman. Notable at the end of 2022, the Administration for Community Living published the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers.  In addition to the government-supported discount on broadband access, the report recommended “future-focused tools and assistive technology, such as smart homes, wearable blood pressure and heart monitoring devices, automated pill dispensers, e-learning modules, task management apps, speech amplification and adaptation systems, and geo-tracking.” Some of these tools are included among examples in the Technology for Aging 2023 Market Overview.