Product Description

Whether you're exploring options for yourself or for your aging parents, you know that navigating the world of health care services and long-term-care facilities can be a daunting task. Consumer Reports, unrivaled in its unbiased expertise, provides the essential guide to getting the best care.

Filled with hands-on practical advice in a user-friendly tone and format, this invaluable handbook will help you find the right services and secure them at the lowest cost. How can you take advantage of pharmaceutical company drug-assistance programs? What essential services should a home health aide provide? How can you calculate annual health care expenses? How do you decipher a state survey report for a nursing home? Where can you find adult day care? What should you look for in an assisted-living contract? You'll find the answers to these and hundreds of other questions in this book, including:

* The ins and outs of paying for health care services, including Medicare coverage and insurance options.

* How to find the best long-term care, whether at home or in the community, whether you're looking at assisted-living facilities or nursing homes -- and how to pay for it.

* City-by-city ratings for Medicare HMOs and Medicare supplement insurance policies, as well as a guide to how well your state is monitoring nursing homes.

* Easy-to-use worksheets and tables to help you figure out your assets, judge an assisted-living facility, compare home care costs, evaluate an HMO drug plan, and much, much more.

* Comprehensive appendixes to guide you to state-by-state information on insurance counseling, advocacy groups for the elderly, other helpful organizations, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139803 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-05
• Released on: 2000-12-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

From Booklist
Practical advice and realistic steps to take distinguish this guide published under the auspices of the nation's foremost consumers' advice service. If at times the text is heavy going, so is the subject. For determining the actions to take to get the best health care isn't a job for dummies, though the health-care system sometimes seems to have been created by dummies or, perhaps, sharpies--huge businesses and Congress members battered by powerful interest groups--on the principle that it is easier to sell a health-care policy or a hospital program to buyers who are confused. The guide explains all the system's elements in detail, alerts the reader to potential problems, tells where to get additional information and support, and offers some helpful (if, for libraries, problematic) worksheets and cost estimates. Health-care jargon, such as the snaky-sounding retroactive disenrollments , gets explained, and every senior is advised to prepare both a health-care proxy and a living will. The 20 appendixes include Consumer Reports ratings of insurance policies, HMOs, and nursing homes. William Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
Whether you're exploring options for yourself or for your aging parents, you know that navigating the world of health care services and long-term-care facilities can be a daunting task. Consumer Reports, unrivaled in its unbiased expertise, provides the essential guide to getting the best care.

Filled with hands-on practical advice in a user-friendly tone and format, this invaluable handbook will help you find the right services and secure them at the lowest cost. How can you take advantage of pharmaceutical company drug-assistance programs? What essential services should a home health aide provide? How can you calculate annual health care expenses? How do you decipher a state survey report for a nursing home? Where can you find adult day care? What should you look for in an assisted-living contract? You'll find the answers to these and hundreds of other questions in this book, including:

* The ins and outs of paying for health care services, including Medicare coverage and insurance options.

* How to find the best long-term care, whether at home or in the community, whether you're looking at assisted-living facilities or nursing homes -- and how to pay for it.

* City-by-city ratings for Medicare HMOs and Medicare supplement insurance policies, as well as a guide to how well your state is monitoring nursing homes.

* Easy-to-use worksheets and tables to help you figure out your assets, judge an assisted-living facility, compare home care costs, evaluate an HMO drug plan, and much, much more.

* Comprehensive appendixes to guide you to state-by-state information on insurance counseling, advocacy groups for the elderly, other helpful organizations, and more.

About the Author
TRUDY LIEBERMAN, a journalist for more than thirty years, is director of the Center for Consumer Health Choices at Consumers Union, the parent organization of Consumer Reports magazine, and author of How to Plan for a Secure Retirement and Slanting the Story: The Forces That Shape the News. She is one of the country's leading investigative journalists today writing on health care issues, and she has received numerous awards, including two National Magazine awards and ten National Press Club awards.

Other books from the Consumer Reports library include the Consumer Reports Money Book, Consumer Reports Guide to Baby Products, and the Consumer Reports New Car Buying Guide.

For more information, visit www.ConsumerReports.org.

Customer Reviews

Great Resource for those with aging parents
Very little on this subject is written in the daily press despite the growing numbers of seniors in US.

Just as important as understanding your taxes each year another topic we'd love to ignore, facts are provided with an understanding of the complexities of the subject matter.

The issues are addressed in a manner to provide the inside scoop on how to deal with the issues and provides resources. Provides a starting point for drafting your parental plan of action if one is not in place. Found this overall to be a great introduction to these issues.

Consumer Reports' Guide to Seniors' Health Services
This volume is a compilation of the latest facts about caring for senior citizens. The facts clearly presented here enable caregivers and seniors to explore available services and compare the costs and benefits of each. Informed decisions can be made based on the background knowledge in this book and interviews of service providers in your area. A must-read for anyone who is responsible for elder care.

Get another book too
I recommend "Retirement Nightmare" ISBN: 1573927961 . To avoid a guardianship in the State of Florida, and other states, should be of paramount importance. Find out how to protect yourself and your loved ones with alternatives: health care surrogate, durable power of attorney, mediation and more. Consider that if you leave your parents to fend for themselves, and ignore the deterioration associated with aging, a guardian can gain a guardianship over them and their assets, without informing you. That guardianship will nullify the most meticulous of plans. To really cover your aging parents, make sure they create a "Pre-need" guardianship and name someone they trust, this is the only way predators in the retirement homes will not be able to force guardianship on them. Also create an irrevocable trust.