Life After 50 Expo

What are signs that seniors should stop driving?

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You have been driving since you were old enough to see over the steering wheel, but now your kids want you to hand over your keys. They might be upset because you had an accident or two, or worried about that time you got lost. If you are like the other 33 million licensed drivers over the age of 65, you want to keep driving as long as possible – you have places to go and things to do. So, how do you know when it is time to stop driving? Here are a few signs:
•   Rising insurance rates, or multiple tickets or warnings
•   Damage to your car
•   Reluctance to drive or difficulty driving at night
•   Comments by friends and family
•   Dangerous driving habits

 

Most people think of teenagers when they think of dangerous driving habits, but seniors sometimes cut corners behind the wheel. An older person might skip the seat belt, for example, or drive more slowly than conditions warrant.

 

Certain risk factors increase the odds for having an auto accident while you grow older. These risk factors do not prevent you from driving, but you should consider your risk factors when deciding if it is time to turn in the keys. These five risk factors include:
1.  Health conditions
2.  Vision impairment
3.  Hearing impairment
4.  Prescription drug use
5.  Alcohol use
If you live independently and are not ready to give up driving, consider in-home care. These compassionate professionals are glad to run errands, go to the grocery, take you to the doctor and perform other driving tasks for you.  For more information, contact the Always Best Care office nearest you by calling toll-free 1-855-470-CARE (2273).

Printed with permission from Always Best Care Senior Services,  Marlyn Bruno 904-701-7660.

 

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Marci’s Medicare Answers

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Dear Marci,

I recently found out that my doctor billed Medicare for several medical tests that I never actually received. What steps can I take going forward to protect myself from Medicare fraud?

– Grace (Anchorage, AK)

Dear Grace,

Medicare fraud happens when doctors, providers, or individuals deceive Medicare into paying more than it should, or paying for services when it should not. This is against the law, and it can put the health and wellbeing of Medicare beneficiaries at risk.

There are steps that you can take to protect yourself from Medicare fraud and ensure that you still receive appropriate medical care. Here are some important tips:

1.    Protect your medical information: This includes your Medicare number, Social Security number, and medical information. Only give this information to your doctors and health care providers. Be careful about giving your personal information to people who offer free services or other incentives in return for your Medicare number or Social Security number. Similarly, if people who are not medical professionals want to see your medical records or recommend medical services, do not let them. Social Security and Medicare will never call you to ask you for personal information, so be wary of scammers posing as government agencies or banks trying to request this information.

2.    Do not accept services that you do not need: Some dishonest providers might pressure you into receiving tests or services that are not medically necessary. Billing Medicare for unnecessary services and equipment is a type of Medicare fraud. You can report pressure from health care providers to receive extra services.

3.    Review your Medicare Summary Notices (MSN)or Explanation of Benefits (EOB): Reviewing these documents can help you to verify that you actually received the services listed. For example, if your Explanation of Benefits from your Part D plan indicates that the plan paid for a medication you didn’t receive, this could be a sign of fraud. Keep in mind that it can be difficult to tell whether charges are legitimate if you received services from several doctors around the same time or you take many medications. One way to keep track is to use a health care journal to record all medical services and items you receive.  You can compare your notes to notices above to help you detect possible fraud.

4.    Verify information that you receive aboutMedicare Advantage and Part D plans:  You should verify everything that a plan broker tells you regarding a Medicare Advantage plan. For example, if a broker tells you that your doctor is in the plan’s network, call your doctor to confirm this. If you feel that you are receivingfalse information from a Medicare Advantage plan or Part D plan representative, you can contact 800-Medicare to verify a plan’s information. Medicare Advantage plans must follow specific guidelines when marketing their plans, and cannot provide you misleading or false information to get you to enroll in their plan.

If you receive a suspicious or confusing MSN or EOB, contact your provider or pharmacy first to ask for an explanation. Medical claims can be complicated to read, and reviewing them with your provider or pharmacy might reveal that the charges were legitimate or that a billing error was to blame.

If you are still unsatisfied with the answer you receive, or if you suspect fraud, you should report the issue. It is helpful to have as many details as possible when reporting suspected fraud, such as specific names, locations, and times. If you have Original Medicare, you can call 800-Medicare to report the suspected fraud. If you have a Medicare Advantage plan, you can call your plan directly. Regardless of whether you have Original Medicare or a Medicare Advantage plan, you can contact the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at 800-447-8477. When Medicare investigates the potential fraud, your name will not be used if you do not want it to be. In many cases, Medicare will be unable to confirm the occurrence of fraud without your help.

-Marci

Downsizing and Moving Tips

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Downsizing, increasing your place or just plain moving – it can be traumatic. Here are a few tips.

Before moving any of your belongings into your new home, its important to make sure that everything is as it should be. You may have had a list of repairs you expected – or this may be the first time you’ve seen the house empty. Take some time to go around with a notepad and check all of the sockets for obvious signs of wear and tear and look for damage that you might be otherwise liable for.

Ensure that any cupboards are empty, free of damp, mold or bad smells, and keep a close note of what where the electricity, water and gas stopcocks are. While doing this, you’ll also be getting a feel for where you can place any furniture, how to get it up any stairs or even just into the house. Note down any damage or concerns you have to be discussed with whomever you’re dealing with – its important to have these notes before moving anything in so that you can get the problems remedied as soon as possible.

If you’re renting from a landlord, he’ll give you a list of any fittings, fixtures and furniture he’s leaving – its very common nowadays for landlords to leave ‘white goods’ – kitchen appliances, such as the fridge, freezer, washing machine and cooker. Also,if you’re renting, your landlord should also give you contact details, emergency repair numbers and any paperwork pertaining to these emergency repairs that you may need.

You may also want to get bank details or arrange a good time to come and collect rent. Any final paperwork can be signed now, and then you can start making your new place your own.

 

You should also ensure that the central heating and boiler are working correctly and collect any manuals for these from the previous occupant – these manuals will save you a lot of frustration in the long run.

Water – The Best Natural Drink !

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There are a lot of commercial health drinks out there in the market nowadays. They claim that they provide cure for illnesses, even citing studies of their drastic impact on cancer. But amidst these countless choices, we may e forgetting about nature’s most important “cocktail” – water.

Some health professionals say that most of the people nowadays are dehydrated and they are not aware of it. People are more interested in drinking coffee, tea and sodas which also contains caffeine. About 83 percent of our blood is made of water. Muscles are made of 75 percent water, while bone is 22 percent composed of water. Actually, an average person who weighs around 150 lbs., contains 40 to 50 quarts of water. That makes 2/3 of our body weight are from water.

Drinking water also retains the fluids necessary for the body to function. When the body gets less water, it begins to hold on to each drop of fluid and water it has. Water is stored outside the cells making feet, legs and hands to swell. To overcome this problem, the best thing to do is to drink plenty of water. The stored water outside the cells will be released.

Aside from being completely necessary for biological processes, drinking the recommended 8 glasses of water a day will definitely give you significant health improvements. It would improve your energy, increase mental and physical performance, remove toxins and other waste products from the body.

Water also helps you to get glowing and healthy-looking skin. Water acts as a natural body purifier, this disposes the toxins out of your body. There are even studies citing water intake as an important factor in weight loss. When a body does not have enough water, the fat cells cannot be easily metabolized. This “rubber-like” fat cell is harder to lose. Water can also suppress your hunger.

Not drinking enough water is also the number one reason of fatigue. There are also studies that showed that drinking the recommended 8 glasses of water a day relieves most patients from back and joint pain. It even has effects on our memory and ability to concentrate. If you lack water intake, you can have short-term memory, trouble with your basic math and focusing on what you have in front of you, either a computer screen or a page you are handling.

Aside from regular tap water, you can see a lot mineral water and even alkaline water in the stands. Compared to ordinary tap water, alkaline water has higher pH level. Alkaline water is said to have help in neutralizing acids and remove toxins from the body. Alkaline water drinkers and proponents believed that most of what we eat and drink produces acid waste. Aside from this, they also say that alkaline water gives electrochemical activity to the cell.

To keep the body hydrated, you do not have to drink from your water bottle every time. Food is also source of your 20 percent total water intake. The remaining 80 percent comes from other beverages. Fruits and vegetables also contain a lot of water. Oranges would have 87 percent of composed of water.

Even if there are people promoting alkaline water, there are still other health care professionals who thinks that we should just stick to regular, plain water. Whether it is alkaline water or normal water, we could not deny that it is one of the wonders of Mother Nature. Over centuries, water has been the natural health drink for us.

Quick and Easy Pizza Recipe !

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Who has not eaten a pizza? Living in the US, you surely have but did you ever wonder how it is made? Well there are quiWck and easy recipes that you can make. The only you can do it is by having the right ingredients and equipment.

There are 5 basic things that make up a pizza namely the dough, tomato paste, cheese, the toppings and olive oil. The first one which is the though can be purchased from the supermarket and these come in different sizes. But if you prefer to do this by hand, well that is a different story because for that, you will flour, dry yeast, brown sugar, salt and some hot water.

Since we want to keep things simple, let’s just work with the premade dough. One thing that can change when you make a pizza is your choice of toppings. You can use sausage, ham, mushrooms, anchovies, green pepper and a lot more. So you get the idea, lets work with ham and cheese pizza.

If there is no tomato sauce available, an alternative will be to use spaghetti sauce which also tastes good.

Once the premade dough is laid out on the kitchen table, we get a kitchen knife and spread tomato paste all over the surface of the dough. Next, we put in pieces of sliced ham and then sprinkle cheese all over it.

The last thing to do before we can eat the pizza is to put this in the oven. Before you put it inside, be sure to preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius and spray the oven tray with olive oil to prevent the pizza from sticking to the surface. That way, you can have your warm pizza ready for consumption after 5 to 10 minutes.

But what if you don’t have an oven? Can you still make a pizza? The answer is yes because you can also make it happen using your microwave or a griller. The advantage of using this equipment compared to an oven is that it is much faster to cook.

For those who want to impress their guests, forget making ham and cheese pizza. You should try instead making something that Shakey’s or Pizza Hut offers like Pineapple pizza. The ingredients for making this is similar to ham and cheese pizza. The only thing you added is the pineapple chunks.

When you put toppings on pizza, make sure to spread it over the pizza so everyone will be able to taste the toppings. Cut eat evenly and since it is still hot the second you take it out of the oven, wait two to five minutes first before serving it.

A word of advice for those who love pizza is to watch it at all times so it does not get burned. Keep your kids a safety distance away from the oven so they don’t get hurt.

There are other easy and quick recipes you can try out when making a pizza. You can look for these in cookbooks or online but if you want to experiment, go ahead and do it because the preparation phase is the same regardless of what you are planning to make. If you are too lazy to make it, just buy one already made in the grocery then heat it in the microwave.