I invite you to check out the blog competition - Maria Amelia, a 95 year old grandmother from Spain. She is reported to be the world’s oldest blogger, and she racks up 51,000 hits a month.

Maria is evidently the straight-talking type. She says that her blog was given to her by her “stingy” grandson, as a birthday present. What a great gift, though! This is a great way for them to spend time together. She talks, and he helps her type her entries in.

Maria blogs about current politics, her daily life, and memories of past events, in a stream-of-consciousness format. In her last entry, she reports that she is leaving for a 15-day vacation in Brazil! Hey, don’t forget your sunscreen.

Her blog is www.amis95.blogspot.com. You can read it in English by pasting her url into Yahoo’s translation website - www.babelfish.yahoo.com.

You can check out a video of her with her grandson on youtube.com.




Read the OhmyNews International article,, where she chats up the reporter in question/answer format. Here are a few excerpts:

"Q: Are you pleased that you have achieved international fame as the world's oldest blogger?

A: Yes, I am pleased, but if there were others older than me, I'd be pleased too.

Q: When did you post your first blog entry?

A: On Dec. 23, when I was given the blog. It was my 95th birthday and my grandson gave me it as a gift. Then we got to work. He told me to start talking and I did, and within minutes people were there talking to me! I was amazed, I'd never have believed it. I thought two or three people might answer me...

Q: What made you decide to become a blogger?

A: For something to do. I thought it was a nice thing to do, amusing, entertaining... I wanted to meet new people, and now I meet people all over the world! When I started, I didn't realize it would be people everywhere, or I might not have gone ahead, but now I have got used to it."

To read the Ohmynews interview, click here.

Reinventing yourself is said to be the key to enjoying life as you age. Maria Amelia has proved that point.

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Felicia Curran
www.ElderAdvocacyLaw.com

Thanks to Ray Fernandez, at www.elderabusehelp.org, who first blogged her story.

What would you do if you realized that your incidents of “forgetfulness” are actually manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease or other memory-impairment disease? Would you live with it and stay in your home with your family for as long as you could? Or would you make the decision to enter a nursing home now so as to spare your family the grief that comes with such a decision? That’s the premise from which the newly released film “Away From Her” starts. The film is directed by Canadian actress Sarah Polley in her directorial debut. It stars Julie Christie as the elderly Fiona, and follows Fiona as she makes the decision to enter a nursing home. The film is set in rural Canada, so it is a Canadian nursing home, which is much better than the typical nursing home in the United States. The Canadian setting leaves the film free to focus, not on the horrors of nursing home life, but rather on the life-changing effects of separation and memory loss.

Says Producer Simone Urdl, "The role of Alzheimer's in the film is a metaphor for how memory plays out in a long-term relationship: what we chose to remember, what we choose to forget."

On the NPR website, you can find Terry Gross's interview with Director Sarah Polley and with Olympia Dukakis, who also stars in the movie. In the Polley interview, she describes how Julie Christie had been reported to have memory problems of her own for years, of unknown origin, but how it did not affect Christie's beautiful performance of the Fiona character. For those interviews, click here.

Click here to read A.O. Scott’s review "Time's Wounds and the Heart's" from the New York Times. The New York Times site also has a short video clip of the film.


Felicia Curran
www.ElderAdvocacyLaw.com

Today, I salute Harry S. Truman, who was born on May 8, 1884. One of the first politicians to propose universal health care, he coined the phrase, “The buck stops here.” He meant it.

Among my favorite Truman quotes:

"The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all."

"I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."

"I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!"

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

"Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don't ever apologize for anything."

Harry, we can all learn a lot about advocacy from you. To learn more about Harry Truman, read the Wikipedia entry.


Felicia Curran
www.ElderAdvocacyLaw.com

Elderly consumers are increasingly being victimized by insurance companies selling private fee-for-service Medicare plans, according to Robert Pear of the New York Times. In 1997, Congress set up private Medicare plans -- so-called “Medicare Advantage Plans” -- allowing seniors to replace traditional Medicare health coverage with enrollment in a fee-for-service health insurance plan. Insurance companies are milking these plans for all they are worth, with aggressive marketing. Almost one-fifth of the 43 million Medicare beneficiaries are in some type of private plan, and they are the fastest growing segment of the private Medicare plans.

But some of these seniors who wind up in private plans didn’t even sign up for the plan. Take the case of Bobbie Whatley, pictured here. Wellcare insurance company sent an agent to her doorstep in Columbus, Georgia last November. When she declined to buy the private insurance, the Wellcare agent, forged her signature and a month later she received mail thanking her for joining the plan. As Bobbie says, “It turned into a nightmare... I have all my mental faculties. If I let somebody like this come into my home and take advantage of me, then I am really concerned about older people who are more debilitated and not able to take care of themselves.”

Agents pushing the private Medicare plans sign up unwilling or unwitting seniors, who are not exactly sure what they have bought. Some think that they have just bought prescription drug coverage. Insurance agents often do not explain to elderly consumers that these private plans have hefty co-pays that traditional Medicare does not charge - such as $100 a day co-pays for nursing home stays and hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in co-pays for prescription medications.

Seniors also aren’t told that their doctors or hospitals may not accept these private plans in place of Medicare.

One state insurance commissioner who fields complaints about these private Medicare plans says that the problem is that the law does not require insurers to make disclosures to consumers about the increased costs associated with these plans. “This is a prime example of what happens when the federal government passes a law without proper safeguards,” says Mr. Dale, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner.

To add insult to injury, Congress actually pays these private plans huge subsidies, paying 19% more on average per senior. Is it any wonder that the Medicare trust fund is projected to go broke by 2041??

Wellcare Insurance Company denies it authorizes improper sales tactics, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that Wellcare’s oversight of unscrupulous sales agents is “inadequate and unacceptable.” CMS vows to “step up supervision of private plans.”

You have to wonder if CMS is up to the job. CMS has been operating with only an acting director since October 2006. CMS is the same agency that is in charge of oversight of nursing homes. As described in yesterday’s Elder Advocacy Blog entry, the General Accountability Office has just issued a stinging critique of CMS’ oversight of nursing homes.

It’s a safe bet that the insurance companies don’t have much to fear from CMS. If CMS won’t act, Congress must. It’s time for Congress to pass mandatory disclosures for private Medicare policies and to stop providing subsidies to these insurance companies for these plans.

To read Robert Pear’s excellent article, click here.


Felicia Curran
www.ElderAdvocacyLaw.com

The U.S. General Accountability Office recently filed a report where it reviewed federal oversight of a group of 63 nursing homes nationwide that have a history of repeatedly harming nursing home residents. In 1998 and 1999, GAO had issued reports reviewing the oversight exercised by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) over nursing homes. Those reports found that sanctions CMS imposed on bad nursing homes often did not take effect, because CMS had adopted a policy of giving nursing homes a “grace period” to correct deficiencies before sanctions would be imposed. The prior reports found a “yo-yo” pattern where the nursing homes would cycle into compliance just long enough to avoid the sanctions, and then revert to a pattern of serious violations - avoiding sanctions while continuing to harm residents.

In response to the GAO reports, CMS was supposed to adopt an “immediate sanctions” policy for nursing homes found to repeatedly harm residents. Did they? According to the current GAO report, the answer is “no.” The CMS “immediate sanctions” policy is in name only. More than half of the 63 homes that had serious violations that had harmed residents as of 1999 continued to have serious violations during 2000-2005.

GAO attributes the continuing yo-yo effect to CMS' lax enforcement policies, including failure to impose fines, delaying imposing fines, and levying fines in such small amounts that it is more profitable for the nursing homes to pay the fines (which averaged $350 to $500 per day) than it is for them to provide good care to nursing home residents. An example is:

“A significant medication error occurred when resident #8 was administered the wrong medication over a three day period. The resident experienced hypoglycemia and required hospitalization. Upon return from the hospital there was evidence of actual harm: a decline in the resident’s ability to perform activities of daily living.” The fine for this citation could have been anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000. CMS only fined the home $1,500.

GAO says that CMS terminated from Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement only 2 of the 63 bad homes. What incentive would a nursing home have to do things differently? These bad nursing homes are actually being paid by Medicare or Medicaid to provide the very care that CMS has determined merits a citation. The nursing homes can actually pay the fines with the money that they are receiving from Medicare for the resident’s care.

As long as the federal government makes it cheaper for nursing homes to violate the law than it is to comply, elderly residents will continue to be neglected by nursing homes. For the big corporations that own the nursing homes, it’s just more cost-effective to neglect the residents and pay the paltry fine if they get caught.

And, if you’d like to know the names of the 63 “repeat offender” “yo-yo" nursing homes studied in the GAO report, you’re out of luck: GAO won’t disclose their names. You or your parents could be living in one of these homes (which were in Texas, California, Michigan and Pennsylvania).

To read the GAO report, click here.

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Felicia Curran
www.ElderAdvocacyLaw.com