Elder CareTips:
Mastering The Eldercare Maze™

September 1, 2006

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently sent 230,000 Medicare beneficiaries checks averaging about $215 each along with a letter informing them that Medicare will no longer deduct their monthly prescription drug benefit premiums from their Social Security checks. Just about the time the letters hit the mail, CMS said it was all a mistake, and they want their money back.

So, anyone who got an unexpected windfall should just sit on that money and wait for instructions on how to send it back. If it's spent, there will be instructions for that, too. If repaying the money will create a hardship, the government is graciously going to allow repayment over time. 

And be assured that everyone's Part D insurance is still intact. Deductions from Social Security checks will resume in October. Why they stopped is anyone's guess. Surely we'll receive an incomprehensible explanation eventually.

There will be new letters, with new instructions, going out any day now. Until then, CMS has posted some preliminary information. This is the first of what will undoubtedly be a number of releases.

Every now and again a refrigerator needs to be replaced. Most of us are conditioned to look at models with the freezer on top. For those who are short, who don't have much strength, or who use a wheelchair, a side-by-side refrigerator is much easier to get into, to see into, and to use. The narrower doors of a side-by-side don't need as much strength to open and they need less clearance than a traditional refrigerator, so they're easier to manage with reduced strength or from a wheelchair.

Try an experiment...sit in a chair and try to open your top freezer. Now locate that package of frozen peas buried somewhere up there. That's what it's like when you're in a wheelchair.

Thing is, buying a refrigerator isn't even an annual adventure. The average unit lasts 8 years (so they tell me...could that be right??). Our last one was a geriatric 20+ when it finally gave up the ghost.

So, if you're thinking about your own retirement years, or you're helping someone who's already having some mobility problems, the time to really think about refrigerator needs is before the ice cream is running onto the floor. You're probably not going to run out and replace a functioning unit, but when it goes you'll be in a hurry to replace it and not in the mood to think about options.

Next time you're in a store with an appliance department, gather some information. Then when your mother's refrigerator (or yours) goes out, you'll have a head start. If you're planning your retirement home, side-by-side refrigerator models are the best "universal" design options.
 

More than 85,000 seniors displaced by Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana missed Social Security checks because they didn't have direct deposit.

Many older people don't trust direct deposit. They like to see that check in the mailbox. They like to personally endorse it, and they like to take it to the bank themselves. They don't want to give anyone their account information, and they don't trust invisible transactions.

But if your elder is away from home when the check arrives, it's begging to be stolen. Thieves know when those checks arrive, and they grab them right out of the mailbox. If there is another natural disaster of some kind...and there will be, we just don't know where or when...those checks won't follow your elder and the money won't be available. If he's in luck the Post Office will return them to Social Security. If he isn't, and they are lost or stolen, it can take months to get them replaced. In the meantime, there's no money.

Along with extra flashlight batteries and drinking water, making sure that pension and retirement checks go into the bank by direct deposit should be part of everyone's disaster planning. 

There's a move on to make all doctors use some kind of machine-written prescription-writing device to cut down on the illegible prescriptions that even pharmacists can't read. That will help a lot. But if they keep using the old tried and true Latin abbreviations most people still won't know what they wrote. As a little crib sheet, here are the most common abbreviations we see on prescriptions, and what they mean:
 

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