Memory lapses are common and increase with age; when do they signal Alzheimer's? - washingtonpost.com

By Rachel Saslow - Washington Post Staff Writer

Where did I park my car?

What is that lady's name?

Where are my glasses?

Some call these "senior moments" or "tip-of-the-tongue" experiences. They're mundane for many elderly (and not-so-elderly) adults, but when do they become something more serious? How does one know when it's time to get screened for a memory disorder?

"The reason it's becoming such an acute concern for everybody is that baby boomers are starting to get into the higher-risk age group, but the bigger driver for this is the baby boomers' parents," says James Lah, an Emory University neurologist, who is 48 and has parents ages 73 and 81. "That age bracket is very high risk, and seeing it in our parents makes you acutely aware and afraid of that prospect."

The risk of mild cognitive disorder and dementia increase with age; Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia. About 5 million Americans live with Alzheimer's and, in 2008, it passed diabetes to become the sixth-leading cause of death in this country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, partially because of the lack of treatments to stop or reverse it. Some studies estimate that a person's risk of developing the disease doubles every five years after age 65.

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44 - Top House Republicans throw cold water on health-care summit

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By Michael D. Shear-Washington Post

Leading House Republicans raised the prospect Monday night that they might refuse to participate in President Obama's proposed health care summit if the White House chooses not to scrap the existing reform bills and start over.

In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) expressed frustration at reports that Obama intends to put the Democratic bills on the table for discussion at the Feb. 25 summit.

"If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate," Boehner and Cantor wrote.

Obama proposed the half-day summit on national television Sunday, but in their letter, the two GOP leaders offer their suspicion that the president is not serious about opening a bipartisan negotiation on health care.
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Yes, Let's Talk About Those Republican Ideas - Kaiser Health News

by Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor of The New Republic

The idea that Republicans haven’t had a chance to present their ideas on health care reform is a bit mind-boggling. Five separate congressional committees had hearings; each chamber had floor debates. That’s hundreds of hours the GOP had to talk about health care, all of it in public view and televised on C-SPAN. And that’s not even including all of the unofficial channels at the Republicans’ disposal. Generally speaking, the party of Rush Limbaugh and Fox Television doesn’t struggle to get across its message.

But if President Obama is determined to give Republicans one more public forum for presenting their health care agenda, as he will do when he meets with GOP leaders on Feb. 25, promised last week, maybe that is just as well. For most of last year, Republicans spent their time attacking Democratic plans for reform, rather than describing their own. But now they’ve put a plan on the table. Showcasing that plan--and comparing it to what the Democrats have proposed--might help clarify a few things.

The Republican health care plan is part of the "Roadmap for America's Future." Its chief architect is Paul Ryan, ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and a rising star in the party. Republicans boast that the Roadmap is serious plan to get the federal budget under control, which turns out to be a fairly large exaggeration. As Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center has observed, the Roadmap doesn't account for trillions of dollars in lost revenue from its tax cuts. Yes, that's trillions with a "t" at the front and "s" at the back.

The health care portions of the plan, though, really would reduce what the government spends on health care. And they would do so, primarily, by extracting money from Medicare. Instead of continuing to provide coverage directly, the government would issue vouchers that seniors could use to buy private insurance. The value of the vouchers would rise far more slowly than Medicare spending is expected to grow if nothing changes.

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Association Between Hand-Grip Strength And Poor Survival In Seniors

from Medical News Today

Poor or declining handgrip strength in the oldest old is associated with poor survival and may be used as a tool to assess mortality, found an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) The fastest growing segment of the elderly population is the group older than 85 years, classified as the oldest old.

Low handgrip strength has been consistently linked to premature mortality, disability and other health complications in middle-aged and older people. Handgrip strength, a simple bedside tool, can be an alternative way of measuring overall muscular strength.

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Hypertension May Predict Dementia In Older Adults With Certain Cognitive Deficits

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from Medical News Today

High blood pressure appears to predict the progression to dementia in older adults with impaired executive functions (ability to organize thoughts and make decisions) but not in those with memory dysfunction, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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Don't Give Up on Older Smokers

Older smokers may make better quitters.

That’s the surprising finding from an analysis of a 16-week smoking cessation program at Florida State University (FSU). Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds that older adult smokers are “lost causes” when it comes to quitting, researchers found that older smokers are more receptive to and often more successful at quitting than younger smokers.

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The Big Question: Will bipartisan talks revive healthcare reform? - The Hill's Congress Blog

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By Sydelle Moore & John Owre

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer their insight into the biggest question burning up the blogosphere today.

Today's question:

President Barack Obama has invited Republicans and Democrats to a televised summit on healthcare. Will this generate momentum for healthcare reform?
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Medical News: Evidence-Based Treatment Improves Older Stroke Victims' Chances - in Cardiovascular, Strokes from MedPage Today

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Older stroke patients remain at higher risk for adverse outcomes than younger ones, but the gap has narrowed with wider implementation of evidence-based guidelines, researchers say.

More than 10% of stroke patients over 80 died in the hospital, compared with 3% of those under age 50, Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, and colleagues reported online in Circulation.

But overall use of guideline-recommended therapies improved substantially in older patients from 2003 to 2009, particularly for patients over 90, they said.

During that time, several hospitals and stroke centers have adopted "Get with the Guidelines," an intervention to apply evidence-based guidelines to care. Adopters have seen "substantial improvements ... in performance measures for ischemic stroke patients, including pharmacological and nonpharmacological management in each age group," the researchers wrote.
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Medical News: FDA Okays Statin for Primary Prevention - in Cardiovascular, Prevention from MedPage Today

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By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today, Executive Editor, MedPage Today

The FDA has approved rosuvastatin (Crestor) for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, making it the first statin to receive this indication.

The new labeling, recommended by an FDA advisory panel late last year, also marks the first time that a drug label will include an indication based on the biomarker highly-sensitive C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker.

The new indication would be for men 50 or older and women 60 or older who have fasting LDL of less than 130 mg/dL, a highly-sensitive CRP of 2.0 mg/L or greater, triglycerides of less than 500 mg/dL, and no prior history of heart attack or stroke, or coronary heart disease risk.
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DEFENDING OUR FREEDOM: ADAPT's Call to Action for Home and Community in America. (2/2010)

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by Steve Gold

We The People hold our government accountable for enforcing our rights.

As the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act draws near, the disability community is not busy celebrating because we are literally in a fight for our lives and our most basic freedoms.

Eleven years ago, in the Olmstead decision, the Supreme Court said that Americans with disabilities have the right to live in the most integrated setting. Yet today, states are responding to budget shortfalls by drastically cutting home and community-based services. These draconian cuts are forcing seniors and people with disabilities into nursing facilities and other institutional settings because they don't have the services they need in the community to remain independent.

As states cut vital services, the federal government, which is charged with protecting our civil rights and enforcing the law, is simply standing by - silent - while Americans with disabilities have their most basic freedoms taken away by the states.

The disability community cannot sit by as our freedom is negotiated away in back room budget deals. We must take action!

DEFENDING OUR FREEDOM is a three-prong national campaign initiated by ADAPT to organize the disability community to:

* Demand that the Obama administration fulfill its duty to aggressively protect the civil rights of disabled Americans and enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act/Olmstead decision;

* File complaints with the Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice that document the violation of rights of individuals who have been forced into institutional settings, denied community services, or have had their community services reduced as well as complaints that document the state policies and budget cuts that violate our rights; and

* Document the disability community's efforts to fight back against state cuts so that we can learn from each other's efforts, rally others to join our fight, and hold public officials accountable when they do not support our freedom.

I. DEFENDING OUR FREEDOM: Demanding action by the Obama administration

The federal government is responsible for enforcing federal law and assuring that states comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act/Olmstead decision. ADAPT is demanding that the federal government affirmatively and aggressively enforce the Olmstead decision. To do this, the Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice, must:

1. Accept, investigate and resolve individual and systemic complaints which document state policies and budget cuts that threaten the freedom of Americans with disabilities;

2. Develop specific benchmarks/criteria for assessing state compliance, and holding them accountable. with the Olmstead decision, assess the states and publicly release this assessment on an annual basis;

3. Conduct regular, on-going compliance reviews of states for compliance with the Olmstead decision;

4. Develop "most integrated setting" criteria for determining when DOJ will step in and affirmatively enforce the Olmstead decision whether or not there has been a complaint filed;

5. With CMS, review state submissions for modifying their Medicaid State Plan and HCBS waiver services for the impact that these changes will have on the state's ability to comply with the Olmstead decision so that those changes which limit the freedom of Americans with disabilities are not approved by CMS;

6. With CMS, modify Section Q of the Minimum Data Set so that people who indicate they want to return to community living are actively assisted to do so;

7. Publicly report on the progress that has been made so that these results can be discussed in a potential meeting between Georgina Verdugo, the HHS/OCR Director, and ADAPT representatives.

ACTION TO TAKE: ADAPT is urging organizations across the country to sign on in support of these demands. If your organization would like to support this campaign, email DOF.signon@gmail.com

II. DEFENDING OUR FREEDOM: Filing complaints to protect our freedom

The Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and Department of Justice are charged with protecting the civil rights of Americans with disabilities who want to live in the most integrated setting. Although they are able to affirmatively enforce the law without specific complaints, these agencies typically take action only when complaints are filed. We need to file complaints that document the violation of rights of individuals who have been forced into institutional settings, denied community services, or have had their community services reduced. We must also file complaints that document the state policies and budget cuts that steal the freedom to we are entitled under the Olmstead decision.

ACTION TO TAKE: ADAPT has prepared a form you can download and fax to us toll free at 1-888-324-0787. We will forward your complaint to the Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights, the appropriate HHS/OCR Regional office, and the Department of Justice. If you choose to file your complaint yourself, please notify us at DOF.complaint@gmail.com that you have filed a complaint and, if possible, send ADAPT a copy.

III. DEFENDING OUR FREEDOM: Fighting back and sharing our stories

Even though there are different battles in individual states, we are fighting the same fight. To strengthen these efforts across the country, our campaign will collect personal and state stories about the effects of budget cuts and the efforts to fight back against them. ADAPT has created a website (www.defendingourfreedom2010.blogspot.com where we can post information and pictures of your advocacy. This will create a public record of the disability community's efforts to stop cuts and hopefully inspire others across the country to speak up and speak out, too. State advocates can also submit individual calls to action so that we can support each other's efforts.

ACTION TO TAKE: Send submissions to defendingourfreedom@gmail.com . And remember to keep up on what groups are doing by reading the blog: www.defendingourfreedom2010.blogspot.com

Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at http://www.stevegoldada.com with a searchable Archive at this site divided into different subjects.

To contact Steve Gold directly, write to stevegoldada@cs.com or call 215-627-7100.