ELF News Archives
September 2005
- People living longer worries pension funds and insurers -
A sharp increase in life expectancy in the past 10 years is posing bigger problems for both pension funds and life insurers and adding to the pressure for raising the retirement age, according to new figures.
Telegraph 9/30
- SOCIAL SECURITY ISSUES -
Moving to a consumption tax, whether implemented as a personal consumption tax, a value-added tax or a retail sales tax would cause a substantial increase in the nation's capital stock. This, in turn, would raise wages and real output compared to the current system, says the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA)....Social Security reform is even more important than tax reform because it avoids dramatic increases over time in payroll taxes that would otherwise be needed to pay benefits to the elderly, says the NCPA.
NCPA 9/30
- In bankruptcy, companies under pressure to dump pension funds -
Murray Specktor, a first officer who flew Boeing 747-400s on Northwest Airlines' Asian routes, took early retirement this year at the age of 52, knowing he wouldn't get a huge pension. But now that the carrier has filed for bankruptcy protection, he fears his monthly payments will be cut as much as 70 percent.
KARE 9/30
- Senior Citizens Now Fastest Growing Group to Develop Epilepsy -
Epilepsy is often considered a disorder of the young, or a disease that people are born with. But according to the National Council on the Aging (NCOA), people can develop epilepsy as they age, and the greatest number of newly diagnosed cases each year occurs in older people. Senior citizens, those older than 65, are now the fastest-growing group in America to develop epilepsy.
Senior Journal 9/29
- Senior Citizens Can Expect Drug Plan Marketing Blitz -
Senior citizens on Medicare are about to be swamped with choices as the federal government enacts a massive prescription drug program and health insurers begin battling to sign up customers across the country.
ChallengerNKY 9/29
- Appalled over pork -
Social Security is in great financial shape and nowhere near the imminent collapse that faces Medicare in just a few short years. Here are the facts as reported by the Social Security and Medicare actuaries earlier this year. The unfunded liability of Social Security in perpetuity is $11.1 trillion. The unfunded liability of Medicare is $68.1 trillion,...
Town Hall 9/29
- Reports of elder abuse skyrocket -
Elder abuse cases rose by 85 percent over a 10-year period ending in 2003, the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority reports....The review paints a picture of the average victim, who is most likely white, widowed, female and has some physical impairment.
The Southern Illinoisan 9/28
- Nursing homes fight to survive -
The vast majority of Wisconsin's approximately 400 nursing homes are suffering “staggering losses,” officials say, including Vilas County's only not-for-profit facility, ...“The whole system is wrong,”
Vilas County News-Review 9/28
- Fund shortage may spell social security crisis -
China's under-financed social security fund is searching for new approaches to tackling a widening deficit, four years after it scrapped a plan to sell some state assets to help close the gap.
China Daily 9/26
- The War on Pain Sufferers -
...people who suffer chronic pain are routinely undertreated because their doctors fear that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will accuse them of being drug pushers, destroy their practices, wipe them out financially, and throw them into jail for good measure. This is no exaggeration. Doctors have even been charged with murder when a patient dies an apparently drug-related death.
FFF 9/23
- Helping the elderly hurricane victims -
Throughout the Hurricane Katrina disaster, people have worried about where their relief dollars will end up. Ethos, Southwest Boston's elder service agency, announces the opportunity to target donations to help elders who have been displaced by the storm.
Town Online 9/23
- Little House on the Flood Plain -
President Bush has a job of historic proportions in trying to provide homes for the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina, many of them very badly housed before the storm. So far, we've heard some good ideas and some terrible ones, but none address the huge scale of the problem.
NY Times 9/23
- Nursing Turnover Impacts Nursing Homes -
With more than 12 million Americans receiving residential long-term care services each year, recently released North Carolina industry data and demographic trends are a source of concern. A report by the North Carolina Center for Nursing examined turnover rates among Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) and nurse aides in our healthcare system and found that the long-term care industry in our state faces the costly problem of high nurse turnover rates...Based on a 2004 survey of nurse employers, the study found that the highest rates of turnover and related spending are found in long-term care facilities like nursing homes, when compared to home health agencies, public health departments, or hospitals.
The Daily Record 9/22
- THE REAL RACISTS -
"Continued dependence" upon welfare induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole [out] relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." Franklin D. Roosevelt
Ether Zone 9/22
- Voinovich wants Social Security surpluses under lock and key -
U.S. Sen. George Voinovich said Monday that President Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security is dead for now and that Congress should focus instead on protecting the retirement program's surpluses.
The Plain Dealer 9/22
- Santorum takes Bush to task over Social Security strategy -
Frustrated by Congress' failure to move on Republican plans to address Social Security problems, Sen. Rick Santorum yesterday said he thought that the White House had made a "fundamental error" in handling its public relations campaign to restructure the federal retirement system.
Nation and World 9/22
- How public pension promises are draining state and city budgets -
Even states with well-funded plans are struggling to meet their current obligations. For years, New York State enjoyed low pension payments, thanks to strong investment returns and fully funded plans, but in 2004 cities and counties across the state got a rude awakening. Pension contributions jumped as much as 248% in one year. "It was the equivalent of what I call a fiscal atom bomb,"
BusinessWeek 9/21
- Health Department seeks to trim Medicaid waste in nursing homes -
The state Health Department is trying to trim Medicaid waste in nursing homes by letting them give different levels of care...This month, the Health Department is asking nursing homes to seek certification that would allow them to provide less costly care for healthier residents.
WSTM 9/21
- Grassley says relief effort may delay Social Security overhaul -
Senator Charles Grassley says proposals to revamp Social Security will likely be delayed until next year.
WHO TV 9/21
- In nursing homes one third of seniors suffer from malnutrition -
Old people are not being deliberately deprived of food but institutions caring for seniors apply nutritional standards recommended for the population at large. As old people tend to eat less than others, they do not get enough energy in their diet. And it is more important for seniors to get sufficient energy than for the food to fulfil the criteria of a traditional balanced diet.
Seniorscope 9/20
- What to do at Treasury -
...although there has been much discussion of a Bush "plan" to reform Social Security over the last year, in fact no such plan exists. It remains a bare-bones idea, with no flesh in the form of details or legislative language that would allow anyone to analyze its specific features.
Town Hall 9/20
- Listen to elders -
Regretfully, modern American culture sometimes treats mature adults as senile old fogies afflicted with “senior moments” and susceptible to “old timers” disease. Or worse, as greedy geezers. Elders are treated worse than children — to be neither seen nor heard.
Galveston County Daily News 9/20
- Report: Elder abuse on the rise -
Reports of elder abuse have skyrocketed in Illinois while most crimes have declined in recent years.
Elder-abuse cases rose by 85 percent over a 10-year period ending in 2003, the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority reports. Meanwhile, violent crimes -- murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault and robbery -- dropped 47 percent from July 2002 to June 2003.
Pantagraph.Com 9/19
- Sale of nursing homes may be harbinger of new gold rush -
Looking to capitalize on a burgeoning aging population and improved government reimbursement rates, a Los Angeles nursing home operator is entering Northern California for the first time.
Silicon Valley Business Journal 9/19
- Where hundreds died -- under medical care -
Of the dead collected so far in the New Orleans area, more than a quarter of them, or at least 154, are patients, mostly elderly, who died in hospitals or nursing homes, figures that came out of interviews with officials from six city hospitals and 26 nursing homes.
SF GATE 9/19
- Whoops! There Goes Another Pension Plan -
"It's become a kind of system to bail out companies," Thomas Conway, vice president of the United Steel Workers of America, said of the pension corporation, which Congress created in 1974 to protect retirees if their employers went bust. "People have been able to use it tactically, as a business strategy, and I don't think that's what Congress meant."...Over the long term, the rate of (pension) defaults is clearly rising...
New York Times 9/19
- When Sores Won't Heal -
On the persecution of the New Orleans Nursing Homes....How about we sic Charles Foti, Louisiana's self-righteous attorney general, on the president of the United States, the governor of Louisiana, the mayor of New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the crew at FEMA? Not to mention himself.
Chuck's charging two owners of a New Orleans nursing home with negligent homicide because, to quote Reuters, the state "presumes" 34 residents of the facility drowned during the flood. No need for autopsies: elderly patients seldom die of natural causes, especially under stress. Indeed, that's why Salvador Mangano, Sr., 65, and his wife, Mable, 62, decided against evacuating these folks. They thought their patients stood the best chance of surviving Katrina and the government's "help" in their own beds. Given the number of seniors who died in their wheelchairs at the Superdome, anyone of minimal sense and compassion would agree.
Lew Rockwell 9/16
- Social Security Legislation Could Be Shelved -
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds will recommend to the House Republican leadership that the party drop its effort to restructure Social Security, at least for this year, House Republican aides confirmed yesterday.
Washington Post 9/16
- Elder abuse flourishes in silence -
The problem is growing in California because it is largely unrecognized and unreported.
Daily Breeze 9/16
- The Supreme Court and Social Security -
In 1960 the Supreme Court made a decision that all workers should remember every two weeks when they get their paychecks. In Flemming v. Nestor the Court ruled that Americans have “…no legal right to Social Security benefits and benefits are part of government spending programs, no different in the eyes of the law than corporate welfare or farm subsidies".
Opinion Editorials 9/16
- Elder abuse rises dramatically in Illinois, report says -
While murder, sexual assault and child abuse are slowly declining in Illinois, the number of senior citizens experiencing abuse is increasing....Between June 1993 and June 2004, reported elder abuse jumped 84 percent in Illinois, according to a report by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority in Chicago....In 1993, there were 213 reported elder abuse cases for every 100,000 Illinois residents. By 2003, there were 391 reported elder abuse cases for every 100,000 Illinois residents.
Belleville News-Democrat 9/12
- 'We're planning on moving' Social Security reform -
The proposal (Sen. Jim) DeMint (R-S.C.) refers to is his own. It would use Social Security’s surplus to open private accounts for millions of Americans. Republican House leaders say they are ready to bring it to a vote as early as this month.
Journal Times 9/12
- The Economics of Self-Ownership -
The moral case of self-ownership can be strengthened even further by reflecting on its economic dimension...When we realize that a great many of our acts connect with other acts of ours and of other people in a web that extends out in space and backwards and forwards in time, we see that it is practically impossible for someone else to make us better off by making our decisions for us.
Mises 9/12
- Shocking find leads to elder abuse charges -
The scene could have been from a horror movie, but sadly, the filthy and deplorable conditions one Auburn man was living in were all too real...Henry Sloboda, 75, was found by ambulance personnel in a single-wide trailer in Foresthill, lying in his own feces and covered with body lice, officials said. The two women reportedly responsible for the senior with dementia now face multiple felony charges of elder abuse and grand theft.
Auburn Journal 9/07
- Disadvantages of Social Security -
Social Security is not appropriate for people who expect to die before being eligible to collect benefits, or before they could collect sufficient benefits to compensate for the premiums they paid....Social Security financially harms the young, and this harm affects their entire lives. This is a different harm than the opportunity cost of not being able to invest one's Social Security contributions. This is a real cost of increased indebtedness. A typical young person with a mortgage, car loan, and moderate credit card balances is paying a lot of interest charges. Particularly on credit cards, the interest rates are very high — much higher than the rate of return a person can expect on Social Security contributions.
Arbyte.US 9/07
- New Ameriprise Retirement Services Survey Finds Financial Stress Still a Factor This 401(k) Day, Despite a Stronger Economy -
Retirement savings leads the list of concerns. More seek help with investment decisions and lack healthy plan accounts. Most cling to unrealistic assumptions about income needs in retirement
New Ameriprise Retirment 9/06
- Feds OK Rell nursing home funding plan -
Federal health officials have approved a plan by Gov. M. Jodi Rell to initiate a nursing home user-fee system expected to bring nearly $120 million from Washington.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service on Friday approved the request by the state Department of Social Services for new rates affecting nursing homes, home health care services and several nonprofit social service groups.
New Times Live 9/06
- FPA members call for Social Security reform now -
Financial planners overwhelmingly agree that reform of Social Security is needed now to avoid future insolvency in the federal retirement trust fund, according to a survey recently conducted by the Financial Planning Association...."Financial planners are on the front lines every day with their clients in attempting to decipher how future Social Security benefits will affect their retirement income,"
Westchester County News 9/06