Cancer Death Rate Declines Will Create Greater Long-Term Care Need

A steady decline in overall cancer death rates among America's aging adult population will create added stress on the long-term care needs of seniors.

Medical advances and better lifestyles among the aging population appears to have saved 898,000 deaths from cancer between 1990 and 2007.  According to the latest statistics presented today by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, this is both good and bad news for the primary targets of cancer - senior citizens.

"When you live a long life, the risk of needing costly long-term care services is great," explains Jesse Slome, AALTCI executive director.  "When you live a longer life, the risk and cost will be even greater.  More Americans will need home care and nursing home care services.  Medicare which pays for cancer treatments for millions of seniors does not cover the long term health care costs associated with aging, or pays very little of them," Slome notes.  "Millions of senior or aging baby boomers have no plan in place and will be quite surprised by the outcome."

Progress in the survival rate of those once impacted by cancer has not benefited all segments of the population equally.  According to researchers, cancer death rates for individuals with the least education are more than twice those of the most educated.

Cancer death rates according to the American Cancer Society are still declining in the U.S., but some are declining faster than others -- and cancer remains the leading cause of death for Americans younger than 85.

In it's yearly report they estimated that 1,596,670 new cancer diagnoses and more than 570,000 cancer deaths are expected to occur this year.

Slome shared that death rates fell by about 22% for men and 14% for women between 1990 and 2007. Since the early 2000’s, the decline has been 1.9% a year in men and 1.5% each year in women.  Better early detection and better treatment as well as reduced tobacco use over the past half-century that helped turned the tide in cancer-related deaths.

The long term care insurance Association recently reported that some 500,000 Americans would apply for insurance coverage this year.  "That is certainly an indication that responsible people understand they need to have a plan in place," Slome adds.  The Association will launch a monthlong effort to provide free long-term care insurance cost comparisons for consumers.  Click here to request a free long term care insurance cost comparison or visit their website at http://www.aaltci.org/free-quote/.

Younger people are starting long term care insurance planning

A year ago, the majority of individuals who contacted the Association looking for long term care insurance information were age 70 or older.  In fact, we got our share of calls from 80 year olds frustrated that they couldn't find a long-term care insurance company willing to speak with them.  Only a few will and most are understandably highly selective in terms of the risks they will be willing to accept.

Well, slowly I have been witnessing a change.  We started seeing inquiries from more folks in their young 60s and more in their mid to late 50s.  But all of a sudden (meaning the last two or three months) we are fielding calls and questions from consumers in their 40s and even a few in their late 30s.

This is a pretty seismic shift in the world of long term care insurance marketing and certainly will impact how a product is sold.  After all, convincing someone in their late 50s and mid 60s that they need to plan for when they reach the age of 80 is reasonable to accomplish.  For someone who is 40, that is literally an entire lifetime away.

First, what do I think is responsible for what's happening?  To be honest, I hope it is a result of the year-after-year studies published by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance that explained the percentage of applicants declined for health reasons and the importance of applying at younger ages when you can still qualify.  It could be that agents have "picked off the low hanging fruit" in terms of marketing to 60 and 70 years olds.  Or, it coule be that younger people are being solicited and a percentage are using Google to find expertise and validate the claims.

What we'll want to see if whether more younger people actually apply and buy.  The year-to-year change in buying ages from 2009 to 2010 was statistically insignificant.

One of the more interesting observations that have caught my attention.

Every Long Term Care Insurance Fact And Figure

​Not a single day goes by without my phone ringing or an email being received from an agent or broker with a question about a ststistic or fact.

And over the years, I have learned to do lots of digging to find those facts and figures that answer threse meaningful questions.  Typically I put the print out from the various reports into a folder knowing that sooner or later I'd need to refer to the report again.

But no longer because we have just released the first Long-Term Care Insurance Almanac that contains all the facts and data one would ever want in one handy, dandy guide.  It's the perfect piece to use yourself or to give to those pesky prospects who ask questions (it will also show them you are a knowledgeable professional ... because no one else will have shared this with them).

We've posted a PDF of the ALMANAC online for you to view.  Go to http://www.aaltci.org/tools and then scroll down towards the bottom.  You'll see the image next to the image of the LTC Insurance Sourcebook.

New Study Ties Diet To Longer Life

According to medical researchers, today's leading causes of death have shifted from infectious diseases to chronic diseases.  These include cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Both of these illnesses may be affected by diet a study published in the January 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reveals. 

Researchers examined data regarding the associations of dietary patterns with mortality through analysis of the eating patterns of over 2500 adults between the ages of 70 and 79 over a ten-year period. They found that diets favoring certain foods were associated with reduced mortality.

By 2030, an estimated 973 million adults will be aged 65 or older worldwide according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. This study sought to determine the dietary patterns of a large and diverse group of older adults, and to explore connections between these dietary patterns with survival over a 10-year period.

Researchers were able to group the participants into six different clusters according to predominant food choices including healthy foods, high-fat dairy products, meat, fried foods, and alcohol and sweets and desserts.
The "Healthy foods" cluster was characterized by relatively higher intake of low-fat dairy products, fruit, whole grains, poultry, fish, and vegetables, and lower consumption of meat, fried foods, sweets, high-calorie drinks, and added fat. The "High fat dairy products" cluster had higher intake of foods such as ice cream, cheese, and 2% and whole milk and yogurt, and lower intake of poultry, low-fat dairy products, rice, and pasta.

The study was unique in that it evaluated participants' quality of life and nutritional status, through detailed biochemical measures, according to their dietary patterns.

After controlling for gender, age, race, clinical site, education, physical activity, smoking, and total calorie intake, the "High-fat dairy products" cluster had a 40% higher risk of mortality than the "Healthy foods" cluster. The "Sweets and desserts" cluster had a 37% higher risk. No significant differences in risk of mortality were seen between the "Healthy foods" cluster and the "Breakfast cereal" or "Refined grains" clusters.

Medicaid Must Change; Middle Class Most Impacted

The following is from an excellent story in the New York Times (link below).   The inability of taxpayer-paid programs (Medicaid specifically) to pay mounting bills for long-term care will mandate changes in the current system.
For that reason, the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance urges education and advocates planning.  If you are age 50-to-60, and middle class this is especially vital.  If Medicaid (taxpayers) are strapped today ... you can only imagine what it will be in 20 or 30 years.
Here's the blurb from the NY Times and the link to the full article.

Last year, more than 1,200 people in New York City officially turned their backs on their husbands and wives to qualify for Medicaid, triple the number of people five years ago. The practice, known as “spousal refusal,” is becoming more common as the population ages and the cost of nursing care rises — and it is coming under increasing attack by government officials looking to curb ballooning Medicaid expenses.
In a recent report, Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch warned that spousal refusal could be abused as “an entitlement for the less needy” and urged state officials to rethink it, noting that long-term care accounts for nearly half the state’s Medicaid spending.

Lawyers for the elderly argue the tactic of spousal refusal is legal nationwide, and it is most commonly used in New York and Florida, where 136 people refused to support a sick spouse last year.

Without the option of spousal refusal, lawyers say, American health care is like a ghoulish lottery. Those who need doctors’ care for illnesses like cancer or heart disease are covered by Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly, while those who need more custodial care for Alzheimer’s or stroke must pay for it themselves or dispose of their assets to qualify for Medicaid.

The federal government allows a healthy spouse to keep a house, a car, up to about $2,700 a month in income and up to about $110,000 in other resources. Anything above that must be spent on nursing care before Medicaid kicks in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/nyregion/12medicaid.html?_r=1

Read the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance's guide about reducing the cost of long-term care insurance. Click here.  http://www.aaltci.org/free-guide.

Vision Of Elderly Can Improve

Elderly adults can improve their vision with perceptual training.

According to a study from the University of California, Riverside and Boston University elderly adults can improve their vision with perceptual training.  This has positive implications for the health and mobility of senior citizens.

UCR researchers and Boston University psychology professors conducted a series of experiments to determine whether repeated performance of certain visual tasks that are at the limits that one can see can improve the vision of adults older than 65.

The researchers found that with just two days of training, in one-hour sessions, with difficult stimuli resulted in older subjects seeing as well as younger college-age subjects.  The improvement was maintained for up to three months and the results were dependent on the location in the visual field where the stimuli were located - suggesting that the brain changed in early levels of visual cortex.

Age-related changes in vision - such as contrast sensitivity, dark adaptation, visual acuity, spatial vision, orientation, depth perception and motion perception - have been substantiated in numerous previous studies. This is the first study that demonstrates that perceptual training can be used to improve vision among the elderly in the earliest levels of visual processing.

The researchers used a texture discrimination test in which the participants were presented with stimuli consisting of a letter embedded in the center of a field of horizontally oriented lines. In addition to the letter, an array of peripherally located lines was oriented diagonally and formed either a vertical or horizontal object, always presented in the same quadrant. That was followed quickly with the display of a masking pattern. The task was to identify the central letter and the peripheral object.

 After age 60 there is a steady increase in the incidence of falls and automobile crashes that are associated with changes in visual processing reports the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance which tracks health related issues impacting aging Americans.

Number of Kidney Transplants Double Among Elderly

Elderly kidney failure patients in the United States are twice as likely to get a kidney transplant as they were in the mid-1990s.

While a new study just released reports that the likelihood is still low, the researchers noted that elderly kidney failure patients now have greater access to kidneys from living donors and older deceased donors, and are less likely to die while waiting for a transplant.

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About half a million people in the United States have kidney failure according to data gathered by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance which tracks medical and health conditions impacting the longevity of Americans.  The data notes that  48 percent of them are 60 or older.

The study which will be published shortly in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, included kidney failure patients, aged 60 to 75, listed in the national Renal Data System between 1995 and 2006.

In 2006, these elderly patients had a 7.3 percent chance of getting a kidney transplant within three years of their first treatment for kidney failure. That rate was two times higher than in 1995.

Elderly kidney failure patients should consider transplantation over other types of treatment, suggested the study authors.