Another year will pass without a COLA hike for senior citizens. Qualifying elderly didn’t get one for 2010, nor will they for 2011. And predictions are that next yr, 2012, will only see a minuscule raise for seniors; but don’t go splurging on that weekend cruise just yet. Medicare costs are also seen to escalate and most likely render any cost of living increase moot. By government estimate, there are about 45 million people currently on Medicare or Social Security, which means almost 6 percent of citizens–mostly elderly–will be affected. The... 

Chiya Yamane shuffles down the hall of the evacuation center, an old lady seeking refuge in a children’s school. She is wearing an oversized sweater, her shoulders hunched against the late winter chill that penetrates the Miyako Elementary School where she was brought after the March 11 tsunami tore through her home. She remembers hearing the tsunami warning; then the desperate attempt to get away. “But I’m 84,” Yamane said. “And very slow.” It was a rescue worker who appeared in time to carry her on his back, up the mountainside... 

At age 91, Josephine Calvert has simple goals: return to needlepoint, clean her house – and avoid a stroke. So when recent tests showed she needed a heart valve replacement, she didn’t hesitate to sign up for surgery. “I didn’t know if I’d come out of it because of my age, but somehow there is a strength lurking in me to keep on going,” she said at her apartment in Manhattan’s Peter Cooper Village. Calvert is among a growing number of New Yorkers over 90 having surgery – a trend doctors say has forced them... 

Japan’s top telecom company is developing a simple wristwatch-like device to monitor the well-being of the elderly, part of a growing effort to improve care of the old in a nation whose population is aging faster than anywhere else. The device, worn like a watch, has a built-in camera, microphone and accelerometer, which measure the pace and direction of hand movements to discern what wearers are doing — from brushing their teeth to vacuuming or making coffee. In a demonstration at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.’s research facility, the... 

Medication errors in homes for the elderly are much less likely to occur if residents are given pills or capsules dispensed from a monitored dosage system, finds a new British study. A monitored dosage system is a tray or cassette with compartments for one or more doses for a particular day or a given time. They’re designed to simplify drug rounds for care-home staff and reduce the risk of medication errors. The study included 233 residents in 55 homes for the elderly in the United Kingdom. Pills and capsules in dispensers accounted for 53 percent... 

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is taking aim at one of Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget cuts. Center officials are arguing against a big budget cut for in-home support services. “In-home support services” is a state program that pays caretakers or relatives to tend to sick, disabled or elderly Californians who live at home. The thinking is that’s better and cheaper than nursing home care. There’s also a strong feeling in Sacramento that some people in that program waste or scam money. Governor Brown is proposing to cut in-home... 

A study of antibodies from people infected with H1N1 swine flu adds proof that scientists are closing in on a “universal” flu shot that could neutralize many types of flu strains, including H1N1 swine flu and H5N1 bird flu, U.S. researchers said Monday. They said people who were infected in the H1N1 pandemic developed an unusual immune response, making antibodies that could protect them from all the seasonal H1N1 flu strains from the last decade, the deadly “Spanish flu” strain from 1918 and even a strain of the H5N1 avian flu. “It... 

It’s been a long, strange trip from Woodstock to the nursing home, but baby boomers are getting there — and soon. The first boomers turn 65 this year and can start enrolling in Medicare this month, setting a ball in motion that will probably put further strain on an already overburdened system. For starters, these seniors are arriving at Medicare’s door with more health problems and more expectations than their parents and other generations before them. A century ago, people died mostly from infectious diseases. Today, they’re dying... 

Possibly the most famous fictional senior citizen in the world, Santa Claus, also known as St. Nick, Kris Kringle and Father Christmas, is known across the globe as a jolly fat bearded man sporting a red suit trimmed with white fur. On Christmas Eve Santa Claus enters the home of good children, usually via the chimney, bearing gifts of toys that his elves have been busy making all year long. Parents know Santa Claus as a symbol of the magic and joy of childhood, if not as a strain on their pocketbooks! Despite the well-known attributes of the man named Santa... 

The three elderly men braving the bitter cold to mark the 69th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack on Tuesday clearly illustrated how time has ravaged the ranks of the survivors. “It’s a very sad thing,” said Clark Simmons, 89, of Brooklyn, as he stood shivering on the deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum with two other New Yorkers who lived through the attack. “I remember when we used to have 40 to 50 survivors.” Simmons was 20 when the Japanese launched the surprise attack that plunged the U.S. into World War...