medical

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Before 1965, most health care costs for older adults were paid by the elderly themselves, with the result that many lacked any care at all. This situation greatly improved after the 1965 passage of Medicare. Part A of Medicare pays for hospital care and some follow-up care. Part B pays for some outpatient hospital care and some physicians' services. Neither Part A nor Part B of Medicare pays for prescription drugs and nursing home care is not covered unless licensed nursing services are required. Even then, the number of days covered for nursing home care is limited to 100, and a very small percentage of the actual cost is paid. Medicare Adventage program were introduced after the original Medicare A and B with the idea it would reduce costs. However, they did not, but rather increased costs by about $1,000 per person. Medicare Part D was enacted in 2005, effective in January 2006. Which it introduced a new concept in insurance, the doughnut hole. The average enrollee, after paying a reatively small out-of-pocket co-pay, enters the doughnut hole and has to pay the full cost of prescription drugs until paying out $3,600. Under Obama's health care law, however, the doughnut hole is to be phased out over the next 10 years. Medicaid was designed and added specifically to aid older adults with low incomes. Since 1993, a federal law has required that states recover the money spent on long-term care of a Medicaid beneficiary after the beneficiary dies. In many cases, the only asset to seize is the deceased recipient's former home. This requirement is exempted if a surviving spouse or child under 21 lives in the home, but in many cases the person living there is an adult child who cared for the deceased for many years. If the adult child ...

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...al pathology, which then goes undiagnosed, remains indetected and requires longer correcting. A decrease in compliance with medical treatment will increase hospital stay and the number of doctor visits. There is known, decreased patient motivation for treatment compliance due to hopelessness in depressed participants. Data regarding depression and self-neglect behaviors is in some ways conflicting with the other findings because it has been also suggested that uncontrolled pain produced by disease leads to depression. Participants with depressed moods showed increased self-neglecting behaviors, incidence of medical comorbidities and use of medical services. Depression increased the number of doctor visits in patients with no disease, and even more dramatically in patients with somatic comorbidities. (Lacruz, Emeny, Haefner, Zimmermann, Linkohr, Rolf & Ladwing, 2011)

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