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One month after the Coalition’s ”˜mid-term review’ sidestepped a pledge to cap social care funding, it appears the Government are finally willing to show their hand.
Today’s announcement will impose a limit of £75,000 on the amount that individuals will have to pay towards their own care ”“ after which point, the state will cover further costs.
Demos analysis shows a cap set at that level is miserly, helping only 16% of older people.
However, there remains another significant problem – one that risks further alienating the kind of middle class families already reeling from having their child benefit cut and marriage tax break postponed. The scheme contains a hidden penalty for couples, and for their children.

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Nearly 70 years later, Chaney is among the dwindling number of South Carolinians who fought in World War II. And at 87, he may be among the oldest to receive post-traumatic stress disorder benefits for it.

After decades of nightmares and sessions with doctors, Chaney last year was approved based on his World War II experiences that, according to some of the paperwork involved, included much more than spanning Europe’s rivers and streams.

“My unit was involved in the release of prisoners of war at the Buchenwald concentration camp,” he said in one account his family provided to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “The prisoners looked like walking skeletons and some died while I was there. We used big earth moving machines to dig massive graves.”

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The CBO forecast finds a persistent mismatch between tax revenue and spending over the coming decade. As the economy improves, tax revenue should rise to 19 percent of GDP for the period from 2015 through 2023, up from 15.8 percent in 2012, the report said. But federal spending, after an early-decade dip, will start rising persistently faster than revenues.

“After 2017, if current laws remain in place, outlays will start growing again as a percentage of GDP,” the CBO said. “The aging of the population, increasing health care costs, and a significant expansion of eligibility for federal subsidies for health insurance will substantially boost spending for Social Security and for major health care programs relative to the size of the economy.”

The CBO’s current-law “baseline” calls for spending to reach about 23 percent of GDP in 2023 and, more worrisome, to be “on an upward trajectory.”

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Update: An IBD article is also available on this, entitled “CBO Report Shows We’re Still Headed Toward A Fiscal Cliff” and it may be found there.

…the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s ”” those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security ”” have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

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The finances of the US’s multi-employer pension schemes have deteriorated so quickly over the past year that the body that insures them will almost certainly run out of cash in 20 years, according to a new report.

The chances of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation ”“ the publicly created but privately funded body that insures the nation’s occupational pension schemes ”“ going bust went from 1 in 3 at the end of 2011 to more than 9 in 10 by the end of 2012, a report prepared for the PBGC and released on Tuesday said.

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Single and retired, with no family nearby, 64-year-old Lorna Grenadier knows she’ll need a better support system if she wants to grow old in her apartment in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where she has lived for 40 years. So she’s added community organizing to her list of interests and is helping create a service network she hopes will enable her and others like her to remain in their own homes as they age.

For the past 18 months, Grenadier has been working with other volunteers to research and launch the Foggy Bottom West End Village network. The group aims to provide paying members ($600 a year for singles; $900 for households) a range of services, including transportation and connections to vetted local businesses, as well as serve as a contact point for emergencies. Some of the annual fee will also cover social activities for members.

“It’s also about providing peace of mind,” says Grenadier — a sort of insurance policy should someone need help. In a survey of potential members in the her area, 75 percent said they were interested in the concept, though just 50 percent said they would need the services today.

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I looked it up and found that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, learning problems, attention-deficit disorders, autism and related disorders, and developmental delays increased about 17 percent between 1997 and 2008. One in six American children was reported as having a developmental disability between 2006 and 2008. That’s about 1.8 million more children than a decade earlier.

Soon, I learned that medical researchers, sociologists, and demographers were more worried about the proliferation of older parents than my friends and I were. They talked to me at length about a vicious cycle of declining fertility, especially in the industrialized world, and also about the damage caused by assisted-reproductive technologies (ART) that are commonly used on people past their peak childbearing years. This past May, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 8.3 percent of children born with the help of ART had defects, whereas, of those born without it, only 5.8 percent had defects.

A phrase I heard repeatedly during these conversations was “natural experiment.” As in, we’re conducting a vast empirical study upon an unthinkably large population…

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When South Korean widow Yoon Sook-hee, 62, died after a bout of pneumonia in mid-January, she joined a growing number of old people in this Asian country who die alone and was cremated only thanks to the charity of people who never knew her.

Once a country where filial duty and a strong Confucian tradition saw parents revered, modern day South Korea, with a population of 50 million, has grown economically richer, but family ties have fragmented. Nowadays 1.2 million elderly South Koreans, just over 20 percent of the elderly population, live – and increasingly die – alone.

Yoon’s former husband, whom she divorced 40 years ago, relinquished responsibility after being contacted by the hospital and told of her death. Her only son was unreachable as he had long broken off all contact with his parents.

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We agree with Obama that it will take a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to put the government’s fiscal house in order. Republicans swallowed hard and accepted an increase in tax rates for the highest incomes to start the year. It’s the Democrats’ turn to recognize that federal benefit programs, and particularly healthcare entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid, are on an unsustainable path despite the savings from the 2010 healthcare law.

Obama should lead a Democratic push for reforms that preserve these programs for those who need them, while also reducing the deficit and stopping the federal debt from growing faster than the economy. He’s in the best position to lead on this issue, able to provide political cover for Democrats concerned that their constituents won’t put up with changes to the status quo, while showing Republicans that there are ways to save money without abandoning the government’s commitment to the elderly and poor. To create an opening for the rest of his agenda, he needs to step up to that role.

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Public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product was around 38 percent in 1965. It is around 74 percent now. Debt could approach a ruinous 90 percent of G.D.P. in a decade and a cataclysmic 247 percent of G.D.P. 30 years from now, according to the Congressional Budget Office and JPMorgan.

By 2025, entitlement spending and debt payments are projected to suck up all federal revenue. Obligations to the elderly are already squeezing programs for the young and the needy. Those obligations will lead to gigantic living standard declines for future generations. According to the International Monetary Fund, meeting America’s long-term obligations will require an immediate and permanent 35 percent increase in all taxes and a 35 percent cut in all benefits….

[The final ‘solution didn’t] involve a single hard decision. It did little to control spending. It abandoned all of the entitlement reform ideas that have been thrown around.
Whom should we blame for this? Again, we should not blame Obama and Boehner. In their different ways, they and a number of other people in the Congress are trying to find a politically palatable way to deal with these hard issues. They got what conditions allowed.

Ultimately, we should blame the American voters. The average Medicare couple pays $109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out, according to the Urban Institute. This is $234,000 in free money. Many voters have decided they like spending a lot on themselves and pushing costs onto their children and grandchildren. They have decided they like borrowing up to $1 trillion a year for tax credits, disability payments, defense contracts and the rest. They have found that the original Keynesian rationale for these deficits provides a perfect cover for permanent deficit-living. They have made it clear that they will destroy any politician who tries to stop them from cost-shifting in this way.

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The Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next decade Social Security’s annual cash deficit will rise by nearly $100 billion, reaching $155 billion a year. The cost of servicing the extra public debt tied to cashing in $1 trillion worth of Social Security’s intragovernmental IOUs over the 10 years would add $40 billion to the deficit in 2022 alone, an IBD analysis finds.

Overall, Social Security would account for nearly $200 billion in annual deficits or nearly 20% of the $1 trillion-plus deficit that would occur under current policies, including fiscal-cliff tax hikes.

Then, over the following decade, the retirement program’s impact on deficits would really balloon.

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all–very heartwarming.

Earlier this year, The Guardian reported about Bonnie Ware, a palliative nurse, who had spent 12 years documenting the last words and dying regrets of those under her care (which eventually resulted in a book). Ware said that people at the end of their lives have “phenomenal clarity of vision,” and therefore we should consider what we might learn from their wisdom.

Ware listed the top 5 regrets (most commonly mentioned) of those on their deathbed. At the end of each regret listed by Bonnie Ware, I share a prayerful reflection about this upcoming New Year.

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…social care is in crisis. There are now around 800,000 older people who desperately need social care but who get no help at all.

It is of deep concern to me that pensioners who have more than £23,500 have to pay for their social care costs in full. Many older people who have saved hard, but are by no means wealthy, see their hard earned savings disappear in a matter of months.
Each year around 20,000 older people have to sell their homes to pay for care, one in two people have to pay £20,000 in care costs. One in ten people pay more than £100,000. That is a national scandal. We should all have the peace of mind that that we will be cared for in the right way when our bodies start to fail.

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Bishop Lawrence and his family are requesting prayer for the Bishop’s mother, Bertha Ann Lawrence, who is gravely ill. We are also asking for traveling mercies for the Lawrences as they travel to be with her.

Almighty God, look on this your servant, Bertha,
lying in great weakness and comfort her with the promise of life everlasting,
given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nowadays we do everything later, be it prancing shamelessly across a stage in front of thousands, à la Sir Michael Jagger, or conquering Mount Everest for a second time, like 73-year-old Tamae Watanabe. As we live longer, humanity is increasingly refusing to sit back, put its feet up and settle for a quiet old age.
Nowhere is this phenomenon of age aping youth more noticeable than in the field of divorce. So-called ”silver separation’’, the parting of couples in their sixties after as many as 40 years of marriage, is on the rise, bucking the general downward trend in divorce.
The actress Diana Quick was 61 when she separated from her actor partner, Bill Nighy, after 27 years. As she said in an interview with the Telegraph this week: “There are far more couples splitting up in their sixties now and one reason is that they can. Economically, they have more independence.”

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Three years ago, Anne Stine was a busy mother with three young children and a husband who was on the road a lot. Then her 87-year-old father, a very independent World War II veteran who lived about an hour away, suffered a stroke.

ANNE STINE: And what I found was a man who was no longer independent. He was confused and worried and starting to bark orders. So it was a very emotional time for him, and it was a scary time for both of us.

LAWTON: Her dad, who lived alone, needed a lot of care, and the issues surrounding his care were overwhelming….

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Baby Boomers were the first generation to enjoy the concept of being a teenager, and also the first of the last century to enjoy a prolonged period of national prosperity in which they were encouraged to “have it all”, with widespread home ownership, increasing numbers taking holidays abroad and enjoying the burgeoning consumer economy.

That group of post-war babies are now approaching older age, relinquishing the habits of working life and finding themselves with decades still to live in which they might stay fit and healthy or become increasingly dependent on ”¨help and care from those around them. They ”“ and all of us ”“ are mostly in the dark about when we might crumble physically or mentally.

For many who are retired or ”¨who are facing retirement soon, the huge questions of how long their health will last, who will care from them and how they finance their care are a colossal and persistent worry….

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Over the years, the amount of money spent on adult social care initially stagnated and then decreased. It cannot be right that at a time when the numbers of older and disabled people are growing, there is a smaller pot of money to share amongst the growing need.

More older people are now having to face spiralling care costs just to be able to live with dignity. The generation that saved for their old age, and paid their dues, now often see all that they worked for is sucked into a vortex of social care costs.

My concern is that even when people give up all their life’s assets, achieved after a lifetime of hard work and diligence, there is no guarantee even that the quality of care they receive is assured.

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The older Americans get, the more likely they are to suffer cognitive decline. Roughly 14 per cent of people over 71 have some level of dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For those in their 90s, the rate rises to 37.4 per cent.

Many older folks have spent a lifetime managing their finances and take pride in it. They may hold onto their checkbooks and brokerage statements more tightly than they do their car keys.

Take the parents of John M. Smartt Jr., a Knoxville, Tennessee certified public accountant and investment adviser, who have been married for almost 70 years. Just last week they finally agreed to merge their separate checking accounts and allow Mr. Smartt to write checks for them.

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A major study published by the United Nations has warned that the growing numbers of the elderly presented significant challenges to welfare, pension and health care systems in both developing and developed nations.

And it bemoans the fact that skills and knowledge that older people have acquired are going to waste in societies rather than being used to their full.

“We must commit to ending the widespread mismanagement of ageing,” said Richard Blewitt, chief executive of HelpAge International, which collaborated on the report, Ageing in the 21st Century.

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When Jeanne Majors, 63, took an early retirement in December 2005, she assumed that she would pick up a part-time job and be in good financial shape. She didn’t know that her future would quickly fall apart.

Majors, who is single and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., learned the hard way about the retirement obstacles that most women face today. When the economy slid into the recession, she lost her part-time job and could not find another.

“They wanted somebody young,” Majors says. “Or if I was a man, somebody would have hired me at my age. I’m not sorry that I retired, but things didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. Everything went bust.”

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Americans live 3½ years less than citizens of the five top-ranked countries – Japan, Hong Kong, Iceland, Switzerland and Australia.

The story of American life expectancy is an alarming expression of its larger story. The US is delivering the full benefits of prosperity and modernity in an increasingly narrow way.

It was long known that richer Americans improved their life expectancy at a greater rate than poor Americans, but lifespans lengthened for all. Today, advantaged Americans live longer while the disadvantaged live shorter. That is the real import of the new findings. It is about inequality, in the most basic manifestation – the number of days of life.

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Would an expansion of Medicaid under the federal health-care law help or hinder South Carolina’s finances? Depends who you ask.

Strains of disagreement are building against the backdrop of a campaign by Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration to build opposition to an expansion.
Generally opposed by Republicans and favored by Democrats, the debate over whether to expand the Medicaid program in the states is set to play out in many statehouses across the country. That’s because a June Supreme Court ruling made the extension of coverage optional.

In the Palmetto State, advocates for the expansion contend Haley’s administration is emphasizing the costs and underselling offsetting economic benefits of an expansion.

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More than seven out of ten MPs refuse to back calls to legalise assisted suicide, according to a new survey released last week….

The poll comes just a week after two newly appointed junior health ministers, Anna Soubry and Norman Lamb, suggested that assisted suicide should be decriminalised and just before the Liberal Democrat Conference where some MPs are expected to push for a change in the law.

It found that just 29% of MPs back moves to introduce assisted suicide, while 59% were opposed and 12% were undecided.

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According to Statistics Canada, “grey divorce” has been steadily growing among those 55 and over, with rates expected to increase as more people continue to age.

While marriage remains the predominant family structure in Canada, it only represents 67 per cent of Canadian families, down from 70.5 per cent a decade ago ”” and 91.6 per cent in 1961, before the advent of the Divorce Act, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday in its latest batch of 2011 census data.

And for the first time, the number of common-law families in Canada outstripped the number of single-parent families in 2011, another sign of the declining popularity of matrimony.

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Opposition is not uniform. A few denominations, like the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, with about 22,000 members in Massachusetts, officially support the concept. The Unitarians and other mainline Protestant denominations typically do not take positions on specific state proposals.

And, in an age when many ecclesiastical hierarchies are weakening, in a country where many people are used to filtering religious beliefs through personal and secular lenses, ­individual clergy and congregants do not necessarily follow the lead of church officials.

The national Episcopal Church, for example, officially opposes physician-assisted suicide. But the Rev. Daphne B. Noyes, a deacon at the Church of the Advent in Boston and a hospital chaplain, said her work with dying people and their families has led her to ­believe the option should be available under rigorously limited circumstances that ensure that participation by all parties is voluntary and deliberate.

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My father’s health took a major turn for the worse and so we have been scurrying around working on getting him a place to stay. He will be in a skilled nursing facility in the greater Charleston area, and he arrives tomorrow. To say this represents a major change would be an understatement.

Please pray for us and especially for my Dad, Stuart, who turns 80 next month as we all seek to adapt, adjust and let God bless us in the midst of it all–KSH.

Hogewey’s 152 residents ”“ never, warns Van Zuthem, “patients” ”“ have all been classified by the Dutch NHS as suffering from severe or extreme dementia. Averaging 83 years of age, they are cared for by 250-odd full- and part-time staff (most of them qualified healthcare workers, the rest given special training), plus local volunteers. They live, six or seven to a house, plus one or two carers, in 23 different homes. Residents have their own spacious bedroom, but share the kitchen, lounge and dining room.

Two core principles governed Hogewey’s award-winning design and inform the care that’s given here, says Van Zuthem. First, it aims to relieve the anxiety, confusion and often considerable anger that people with dementia can feel by providing an environment that is safe, familiar and human; an almost-normal home where people are surrounded by things they recognise and by other people with backgrounds, interests and values similar to their own. Second, “maximising the quality of people’s lives. Keeping everyone active. Focusing on everything they can still do, rather than everything they can’t. Because when you have dementia, you’re ill, but there may really not be much else wrong with you.”

So Hogewey has 25 clubs, from folksong to baking, literature to bingo, painting to cycling.

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