November Boomers and Beyond

Automatic Medicare Enrollment Causes Confusion

Dear Savvy Senior, I’ll be 65 in a few months and I recently pre-enrolled in original Medicare. But last week, I received a member card in the mail for a Medicare Advantage plan that I did not enroll in. What’s going on? Medicare is so confusing with all the different choices, and now it seems like I’m getting automatically enrolled in a plan I didn’t even choose. Is this a scam? New to Medicare Dear New, It’s not a scam, but it is a growing problem the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needs to resolve. Here’s what you should know. Automatic ...

Healthy Lifestyles in Old Age Shortens End-of-Life Disability

Leading a healthy lifestyle not only extends one’s lifespan, but also it shortens the time that is spent disabled —a finding that had previously eluded public health scientists and demonstrates the value of investing in healthy lifestyle promotion, even among the elderly. An analysis of a quarter century of data by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and their colleagues nationwide revealed that older adults with the healthiest lifestyles could expect to spend about 1.7 fewer years disabled at the end of their lives, compared to their ...