The League of Iowa
Human & Civil Rights Agencies

Deciding on Care for Elderly Parents in Declining Health

By Lesley Alderman

Published: March 12, 2010, New York Times

TWO years ago my father, then 83, became very ill. Until then, he had been living alone in a pleasant one-bedroom apartment on the Hudson River, an hour’s drive from my home in Brooklyn. After a couple of months i...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Higher Medicare copays, sometimes just a few dollars more, led to fewer doctors visits and to more and longer hospital stays, a large new study reveals. With health care costs skyrocketing, many public and private insurers have required patients to pay more out-of-pocket when they seek care. The new study confirms what many policymakers had feared: cost-shifting moves can backfire.

Let's hope that there is outrage from readers of the Nov. 28 Register article ("Penalties Urged for Dismissing Whistle-Blowers") by Clark Kauffman describing the firing of a nursing home worker. And let's hope that the outrage comes from the governor and the state legislators who have the power to do something about it. The worker was fired, according to Kauffman's report, for doing her job. By law, the fired worker was a mandatory reporter of dependent adult abuse. She saw abuse, she reporte...

LINGLE, Wyo. — Norma Clark, 80, slipped on the ice out by the horse corral one afternoon and broke her hip in four places. Alone, it took her three hours to drag herself the 40 yards back to the house through snow and mud, after she had tied her legs together with rope to stabilize the injury. A dutiful farm wife, Ms. Clark somehow even got to her feet to latch the gate. And her first call when she got to the house was not to 911, but to a daughter 30 miles away.

R...

It is well known that during the nation’s gale-force recession, many older Americans who dreamed of retirement continued to work, often because their 401(k)’s had plunged in value. In fact, there are more Americans 65 and older in the job market today than at any time in history, 6.6 million, compared with 4.1 million in 2001.  Less well known, though, is that nearly half a million workers 65 and older want to work but cannot find a job — more than five times the l...