Health and Disability

AAHSA members have moral responsibilities as caregivers, employers and members of the community. More specifically,
the AAHSA mission, vision and ideals suggest that its members have at least a tri-fold responsibility to provide
high-quality services to those in need, meaningful work and an ethical workplace for employees. These expectations
spring from AAHSA’s central value of respect for all persons; therefore, it is appropriate that the Association and the
Commission pay considerable attention to workforce issues. The increasing number, diversity and significance of issues
related to our workforce underscores workplace ethics as a compelling priority.
Issues related to our staff have moral significance. The term “workforce” considers all talent within our housing, care
and service system—encompassing direct-care workers, service coordinators, housekeeping staff, geriatricians, nurses,
pharmacists, therapists and administrators. We believe that all staff members are truly the heart and soul of homes and
services for the aging.
We begin our exploration of.....

H.R. 3582 offers Congress an historic opportunity to send three important economic and
social signals:
1. Homecare workers should be on an equal footing with respect to all other low‐wage
occupations.
2. Within long‐term care, the homecare labor market should not have second‐class status
with respect to compensation and, therefore, with respect to its ability to attract and
retain workers.
3. Federal lawmakers can work together to coordinate, rather than send conflicting
messages about, the direction of our nation’s long‐term care policy.

More than 90 percent of employers offering long term care insurance at the workplace are willing to help pay for the benefit, Unum (NYSE: UNM) reveals in its second annual Landscape of Long Term Care. This is a dramatic shift from the 100-percent employee-paid coverage that represented most of the market in earlier years.

"The increasing awareness and need for long term care services is propelling the sales momentum in the workplace," says John Noble, director of long term care products for Unum, the leading provider of this benefit. "Unum's sales premium is up 26 percent in the first half of the year. Even more dramatic is that we saw a 54 percent increase in new enrollees."

Costco, Unum's largest group long term care customer, was a pioneer in recognizing the value of employer-sponsored long term care insurance. Costco added the coverage eight years ago and currently enrolls 23,000 employees in the plan.

Medicare Interactive Counselor, an online educational tool now includes health information and resources specific to South Carolina. This web-based resource provides easy-to-understand answers to questions posed by the millions of older adults and people with disabilities who rely on Medicare for health insurance. For the first time, older adults and people with disabilities across the state, as well as caregivers and professionals, can access expert, unbiased guidance that is tailored to residents of South Carolina at no charge.

Medicare Interactive Counselor is designed to help people with Medicare navigate the health coverage maze. A service of the Medicare Rights Center-a nonprofit organization that is the largest independent source of health care information and assistance in the United States for people with Medicare-Medicare Interactive Counselor draws from the experience and best practices of real-life counselors.

http://www.medicarerights.org/help.html

The American College of Physicians (ACP) renewed its call on Congress to replace the 10.1 percent devastating cuts in Medicare reimbursements set to take effect Jan. 1 with at least two years of positive updates that are paid for in a way that does not make the problem worse in future years. The organization of 124,000 internal medicine physicians, related subspecialists and medical students reacted to the final physician fee schedule published late last Thurs. by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

"The cuts will accelerate the collapse of primary care, create access problems and manufacture obstacles to fundamental reform of physician policies," emphasized ACP President David C. Dale, MD, FACP. "It is essential that lawmakers agree on an immediate fix that will provide positive and stable updates, support patient-centered care coordinated by a personal physician, and create the building blocks for long-term reform of a flawed payment system."