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Researchers have found that 54 percent of older American Indians have cognitive impairment, including 10 percent with dementia, highlighting a significant disparity with the rates of cognitive impairment and dementia in the general American population.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study, led in part by the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, also identified vascular injury, which can result from untreated hypertension and diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease as equally responsible contributors to dementia in American Indians, with substantial overlaps between the two. The findings, which NIH reported in May, were published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Previous studies that relied on medical records estimated that cognitive impairment and dementia levels in American Indians were similar to non-Hispanic whites. However, for this new study, the researchers used survey and screening techniques with individual assessments that did not rely on previous access to the medical care system. They found that 216 American Indian participants aged 72 to 95 had some form of impairment. Of those, 35 percent  had mild cognitive impairment (MCI), 10 percent had dementia, and and 8 percent had a different form of cognitive impairment that was not due to MCI or dementia. There were 181 participants who showed no signs of cognitive impairment.

Based on previous studies, researchers estimated MCI levels at 12 percent to 21 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 22 percent to 25 percent of Black Americans, and 20 percent to 28 percent of Hispanics/Latinos.

NIH is a medical research agency and part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Senior Scene by — September 25, 2024 in Health & Fitness
Pet food needed ‘urgently’

(Pictured: Donations of food are needed to keep pets from going hungry in Pierce County, according to the local Humane Society.)

Humane Society for Tacoma-Pierce County urgently needs dry dog food, dry cat food, and cat litter to restock its Pet Food and Supply Pantry due to increased demand from their owners for help feeding and caring for pets.

Donations of unopened and unexpired food and/or cat litter can be dropped off at the Humane Society’s animal shelter at 2608 Center St. in Tacoma Monday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Online donations can be made at thehumanesociety.org.

In 2023, the non-profit animal shelter’s pantry distributed nearly 90,000 pounds of food for more than 7,000 pets. Since May this year, 10,000-plus pounds of have been given out each month, putting the shelter on track to surpass 100,000 pounds by the end of 2024, officials said.

The Senior Scene by — September 19, 2024 in News
A road too much traveled

(Pictured: Seattle-Tacoma motorists face an average rush-hour speed of 21 miles per hour–one of the worse in the U.S., according to a national study. Photo credit: Cascade PBS Newsroom)

Just how bad is the traffic around here?

The most congested cities across America – ones where 17 miles an hour is the average speed during rush hours — have been revealed in a recent study, and the Seattle-Tacoma metro area is one of the 10 worst, slogging along at number 7.

With an average rush-hour speed of 21 miles per hour, a little better than the national mark, Seattle-Tacoma has some of the most jam-packed roads in America, according to the study by Stressfreecarrental.com

New York City motorists have it the worst, travelling at an average of just 12 mph during peak drive hours. Motorists in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco are the second and third worst-off, respectively, at 14 and 15 mph. The rest of the top (or should that be bottom?) 10 are Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Miami. 

The study, unsurprisingly, concludes that drivers are experiencing slow-moving traffic every day.

“As the U.S. tries to improve its air quality, pollution, and reduction of emissions, we need to help traffic flow more freely,” a study spokesman said. “This might involve pumping more funding into improving roads and public transportation to tackle the issue.”

More roads and highways may not be the solution. A phenomenon of “induced roadway demand” was first noticed in the 1930s, most dramatically in New York City, where “master builder” Robert Moses presided over a massive program of parkway and bridge construction. Each new project was necessary, it seemed, to alleviate traffic congestion. And yet, soon enough, the new roads were just as clogged as the old.

The opposite is true, too — call it reduced demand. You might imagine that cutting road capacity would lead to more traffic jams. Indeed, whenever a highway, road or bridge closure is planned, predictions of “carmaggedon” inevitably ensue. But that’s not what actually happens. Instead, traffic congestion is often no worse than before. Sometimes it even improves.

It turns out that more roads cause more driving. This may be counterintuitive, but the effect has been thoroughly documented. The new “generated traffic” doesn’t appear all at once; it can take several years. But the more congested an urban area already is, the faster new roads will fill up. And all this increased driving can’t simply be attributed to growing population. Road expansion leads to more vehicle miles traveled per capita. That also means more greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere.

But how much more?

There’s a tool to help answer that question. The Rocky Mountain Institute, an international organization focused on decarbonizing energy systems, launched an Induced Travel Calculator for the United States. You choose your state, urban area, road type, and the number of lane miles a proposed project would add. The calculator tells how many vehicle miles and metric tons of emissions will result once the generated traffic effect sets in.

For example: Twenty new lane miles of interstate highway in the Seattle area will generate 103 million to 155 million additional vehicle miles traveled annually, which would burn about 7 million gallons of gas. By 2050, the cumulative direct emissions produced by this stretch of roadway would total between half a million and 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That range is important. The upper end represents business as usual. The lower end represents a scenario aligned with achieving the U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement, including “100 percent electrification of new passenger vehicles by 2035 and rapid renewable power development,” according to the calculator’s methodology.

In other words, even with an ambitious timeline for vehicle electrification and clean energy, we just can’t keep building new highways and expect to reduce emissions. That hard truth is what inspired the calculator.

“We’ve aligned the strategy of our work around the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1.5 degrees Celsius carbon budget,” said Ben Holland, a manager for the Rocky Mountain Institute. “We came to this realization that even if we put 70 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, we’d still have to reduce vehicle miles traveled by 20 percent.”

“Nothing prevents the states from doing the right thing and distributing more funds to cities for transit and building complete streets,” said Holland. “But history suggests that states tend to funnel that money into regional highway projects, of which most are expansions and not repairs.”

Washington has a poor track record when it comes to making these kinds of decisions. According to analysis by the Washington Post, Washington is “the eighth worst in the country for its share of roads in poor condition, at 27 percent. At the same time, more than three-fourths of the state’s spending on roads went toward expansion — fourth-highest in the nation.”

Holland hopes the Induced Travel Calculator will help advocates at the state and local levels educate lawmakers and influence the distribution of transportation funds.

Andrew Kidde, transportation team lead at the climate action group 350 Washington, wants to do just that. He noted the Washington Legislature has considered “these things without any information about vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas impacts. “Why do you have targets if you’re not going to measure what your projects do?”

Suppose the Legislature could muster the will to stop building new highways. What should it fund instead?

That’s an easy question for Abby Griffith to answer: Public transit, and not just for the most urbanized areas. Griffith grew up in rural Ridgefield, 15 miles outside of Vancouver, where she now lives in low-income housing near the edge of the city.

“Downtown there’s a lot of buses, there’s options, but for people like me there’s no way I could afford to live in downtown Vancouver,” said Griffith,  who’s blind and depends on the transit system to get around. “Sometimes it takes me an hour to get to the store, especially if I have to transfer. If we had a transportation system that works, a lot more low-income or disabled people could get jobs.”

Upending the highway-heavy status quo won’t be easy. There’s political pressure from the corporations that profit from new highway construction and car dependence; trade unions whose members build new highways; and constituents who believe that expansions will ease congestion. There’s also the state constitution, which restricts the expenditure of gas tax revenues to “highway purposes.”

“The highways have been expanded ever since Robert Moses got his hands on Long Island,” said Kidde. “It generates its own next stage, because you’ve always got one community or another complaining, or you’ve invested $5 million into the engineering and no one wants to say we’re abandoning that. It just keeps going. There’s no good time to stop. Let’s stop now.”

Sources: Cascade PBS newsroom, previously known as Crosscut, a non-profit news site covering the Pacific Northwest, and StressFreeCarRental.com, a website for information on car rentals and related topics, contributed to this report.

The Senior Scene by — September 18, 2024 in Spotlight

SAVVY SENIOR

By Jim Miller

Dear Savvy Senior,

I’m planning to enroll in original Medicare and have been told I probably need to get a Medicare supplemental policy, too. Can you offer any tips on selecting one?

Almost 65

Dear Almost,

Getting a supplemental policy (also known as Medigap insurance) is a smart idea because it will help pay for things that aren’t covered by Medicare, like co-payments, co-insurance, and the Part A deductible. Here are some tips to help you choose an appropriate plan.

In all but three states (Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Wisconsin), Medigap plans, which are sold by private health insurers, are available to new enrollees in eight standardized plans. These plans are labeled with the letters A, B, D, G, K, L, M and N, with two more, C and F, that are only available to those eligible for Medicare before 2020.

Plan G is the most popular policy among new enrollees because it covers the most comprehensive range of benefits. Monthly premiums for Plan G typically range between $100 and $300, depending on your age and the state you reside in. If that’s more than you’re willing to pay, there are also high-deductible plans that have lower premiums but impose higher out-of-pocket costs.

For more information on the different types of plans and coverage details, go to Medicare.gov/publications and type in “choosing a medigap policy” in the Keyword box, and download their 2022 guide. Or call 1-800-MEDICARE and ask them to mail you a copy.

To pick a Medigap policy that works best for you, consider your health, family medical history, and your budget. The differences among plans can be small and rather confusing. To help you choose, visit Medicare.gov/medigap-supplemental-insurance-plans and type in your ZIP code. This will give you a list of the plans available in your area, their price ranges and the names, and contact information for companies that sell them. To get specific pricing information, you’ll need to contact the carriers directly or call your State Health Insurance Assistance Program. See ShipHelp.org or call 877-839-2675 for contact information. 

Since all Medigap policies with the same letter must cover the exact same benefits (it’s required by law), you should shop for the cheapest policy. You’ll get the best price if you sign up within six months after enrolling in Medicare Part B. During this open-enrollment period, an insurer can’t refuse to sell you a policy or charge you more because of your health.

You also need to be aware of the pricing methods, which will affect your costs. Medigap policies are usually sold as either, “community-rated” where everyone in an area is charged the same premium regardless of age; “issue-age-rated,” based on your age when you buy the policy, but will only increase due to inflation, not age; and “attained-age-rated,” with low premiums that increase as you age. Community-rate and issue-age-rated policies are the best options because they will save you money in the long run.

You can buy the plan directly from an insurance company, or you can work with a reputable insurance broker.

Also:

  • You also need to know that Medigap policies don’t cover prescription drugs, so if you don’t have drug coverage, you’ll need to buy a separate Medicare Part D drug plan, too. See Medicare.gov/plan-compare to compare plans. Also note that Medigap plans don’t cover vision, dental care, hearing aids, or long-term care.
  • Instead of getting original Medicare, plus a Medigap policy and a separate Part D drug plan, you could sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan (medicare.gov/plan-compare) that provides all-in-one coverage. These plans, which are sold by insurance companies, are generally available through HMOs and PPOs that require you to get your care within a network of doctors.

Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC-TV“Today”show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book. Send questions for him to Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or savvysenior.org.

The Senior Scene by — September 18, 2024 in Personal Finance/Consumers