Hands to Help Seniors

View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California

Compromise is never a popular option in Washington D.C, but with Republicans and Democrats split nearly 50/50, this seems like the only option.  President Barack Obama seems to see no other way out at this juncture.  According to the New York Times, the president will propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare next week, an effort to come to some sort of a compromise with Republicans.  This is a huge shift in strategy.  It is meant to be a final compromise to Speaker John A. Boehner, but who knows it it will be accepted.  The plan would reduced the projected annual deficit by $1.8 trillion over ten years. He is also increasing the tobacco tax increase, limiting to $3 million the amount that one can save in a tax deferred account and repealing a loophole which allows some Americans to collect both disability and unenmployment payments.   For sure, I hope the latter is passed.  We pay a huge amount of money for workers compensation and unemployment, and em

Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands To Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors.

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View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California It's extremely difficult to get a tax-exempt status from the I.R.S. and for good reason.  There have been a number of recent cases where people have profited from non-profits and the I.R.S has been aggressively going after them to revoke their status and extract penalties, and I applaud them for that. There have even been some criminal cases recently, and one of the biggest was announced this month when state and federal investigators swooped in on Allied Veterans of the World and arrested 50 people in six states.  Although the group did donate to many veterans organizations across the country, the leaders of the so-called non-profit are being charged with stealing almost $300 million that was taken in via strip-mall casinos which were made to look like Internet cafes.  Authorities say that less than 2% of the funds brought in between 2008 through 2012 went to veterans.  The group was able to get away with this for so long because they routed the money through a network of more than 100 different companies.  The I.R.S. is now identifying risk models they can implement so they can uncover these schemes earlier.  I hope these are successful.  It's shameful for criminals to be able to hide behind the veil of a fake non-profit.  Unfortunately, there just aren't enough resources for state and federal investigators to police these companies properly.  Hopefully, developing sophisticated risk models will help them do it more cost effectively.  Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands To Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors. 

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View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California

The Veteran's Administration (VA) Secretary Eric Shinseki said this week  that his agency is committed to ending the backlog of disability claims by replacing paper with electronic records by 2015.  There is currently a massive backlog of about 600,000 claims (70% of the pending total) which are considered backlogged by the VA.  The number of claims pending for more than 125 days has almost quadrupled since Shinseki has been in office.  Currently, only 20 regional VA offices have the new computer system operating, although Shinseki hopes that all offices will be online by the end of the year.  "This has been decades in the making.  10 years of war.  We're in paper; we need to get out of paper," Shinseki told USA Today.  I agree.  The VA system can be extremely slow, and the last thing a disabled veteran needs is to go through the frustration of having to constantly call the VA and try to find out what the status of his or her claim is.  "We're tired of waiting for the VA to get their act together," Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told a reporter.  I agree.  I have never had to file a disability claim, but my company, Family inHome Caregiving, does provide caregiving services for veterans which is reimbursed by the VA.  The system is extremely antiquated and time consuming.  It often calls for numerous follow-ups to find out why claims aren't being paid.  To add insult to injury, if you file the claim online, you are charged a significant fee.  I still file my claims on paper because of the high cost of filing claims online.  I hope that veterans aren't charged anything for using the new electronic system.

Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands To Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors. 

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View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California

Despite the fact that there are numerous signs that the economy may be making a tepid rebound, I'm still worried that those at the bottom of the income spectrum are suffering much worse than those at the upper end and the middle class.  This is particularly worrisome given that government-funded programs to help the poor continue to be cut.  And there's more cuts to come, unfortunately, due to the sequestrations.  A story in the Wall Street Journal today said that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, soared 70% since 2008 to a new record of 47.8 mil. people as of the end of December of 2012.  Congressional budget analysts believe it will rise again this year due to high unemployment and an increasing poverty rate.  There are currently 50 million people living under the Federal poverty level, which often underestimates the pain the poor are suffering through in states like California.  The poverty level is fixed nationwide so it doesn't account for the true cost of living in states like California which are much higher than other areas of the nation.  Our government spent nearly $75 billion on the SNAP program last year, and it's expected to spend even more this year.  Let's hope our government can do something to spur employment levels so more families can come off of the SNAP program.  It's a sad state of affairs in American when 15% are forced into accepting this type of public assistance, largely because they can't find a job.  Sadly, the Republican party is pushing to cut the number of people eligible for SNAP. Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands To Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors. 

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View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California I have written many times on my blog about the importance of research projects which are now being conducted in many areas using huge databases of medical records which sometimes cover millions of people over decades.  New efforts in these areas seem to hit the headlines frequently, and the latest project could help find cures for many types of cancers.  The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASC), a non-profit professional association is unveiling plans to develop a massive database on the care of hundreds of thousands of cancer patients which would allow for searches with the same simplicity google now does.  Researchers complain that in about 95% of the 1.6 million cancer cases each year, health records are in disparate places and sometimes on paper and never are found.  "There is a treasure trove of information inside those cases if we simply bring them together," Allen Lichter, CEO of ASCO told the Wall Street Journal.  Fortunately, the ASCO said they have developed software which can accept clinical information from almost any electronic health record.  Their prototype has already collected 100,000 breast-cancer records from 27 different oncology groups using a variety of electronic record-keeping systems.  This is a huge leap forward in technology and given how big the market is, I'm surprised google didn't come out with a similar product as the CancerLinQ system developed by the ASCO.  We wish the ASCO good luck with their efforts.  Many physicians, hospitals and other medical groups are struggling with the conversion to electronic health records.  It is not an easy task.

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