Health

For 35 years, Angela Jemmott and her five brothers paid premiums on a long-term care insurance policy for their 91-year-old mother. But the policy does not cover home health aides whose assistance allows her to stay in her Sacramento bungalow, near the friends and neighbors she loves. Her family pays $4,000 a month for that.“We want her to stay in her house,” Ms. Jemmott said. “That’s what’s probably keeping her alive, because she’s in her element, not in a strange place.”The private insurance market has proved wildly inadequate in providing financial security for most of the millions of older Americans who might need home health aides, assisted living or other types of assistance with daily living.For decades, the industry severely underestimated how many policyholders would use their cov...

If you’re wealthy, you’ll be able to afford help in your home or care in an assisted-living facility or a nursing home. If you’re poor, you can turn to Medicaid for nursing homes or aides at home. But if you’re middle class, you’ll have a thorny decision to make: whether to buy long-term care insurance. It’s a more complex decision than for other types of insurance because it’s very difficult to accurately predict your finances or health decades into the future.What’s the difference between long-term care insurance and medical insurance?Long-term care insurance is for people who may develop permanent cognitive problems like Alzheimer’s disease or who need help with basic daily tasks like bathing or dressing. It can help pay for personal aides, adult day care, or institutional housing in an...

The first data on births since Roe v. Wade was overturned shows how much abortion bans have had their intended effect: Births increased in every state with a ban, an analysis of the data shows.By comparing birth statistics in states before and after the bans passed, researchers estimated that the laws caused around 32,000 annual births, based on the first six months of 2023, a relatively small increase that was in line with overall expectations.Until now, studies have shown that many women in states with bans have ended their pregnancies anyway, by traveling to other states or ordering pills online. What they have been unable to show is how many women have not done so, and carried their pregnancies to term. The new analysis, published Friday as a working paper by the Institute of Labor Eco...

In early 2020, the world scrubbed down surfaces, washed hands and sneezed into elbows, desperate to avoid infection with a new coronavirus. But the threat was not really lying on countertops and doorknobs.The virus was wafting through the air, set adrift in coughs and conversation, even in song. The pandemic raged for six months before global health authorities acknowledged that it was driven by an airborne pathogen.With that revelation came another: Had indoor air quality ever been a priority, the pandemic would have exacted a far lighter toll in the United States.More than three years later, little has changed. Most Americans are still squeezing into offices, classrooms, restaurants and shops with inadequate, often decrepit ventilation systems, often in buildings with windows sealed shut...

By November 2021, nearly two years after the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan and spread across the world, the surprises seemed to be over. More than four billion people had been vaccinated against the virus, and five million had died. Two new variants, known as Alpha and Delta, had surged and then ebbed. As Thanksgiving approached, many Americans were planning to resume traveling for the holiday.And then, the day after turkey, the pandemic delivered a big new surprise. Researchers in Botswana and South Africa alerted the world that a highly mutated version of the virus had emerged and was spreading fast. Omicron, as the World Health Organization called the variant, swiftly overtook other forms of the virus. It remains dominant now, on its second anniversary.In the two years since its emergenc...

“We want the government to do everything possible to bring the hostages back — that has to be the top priority,” Tomer Keshet, Mr. Bibas’s cousin, said in an interview. “Yarden is wounded, and the baby isn’t even standing yet, he is barely crawling.”“We are so worried that the children were separated from their parents, that they are frightened, that they don’t have the right things to eat, and that that could have long-term repercussions,” Mr. Keshet said. “They are being held underground, hungry, not knowing what’s going on, hearing bombing and fighting and shouting in a language they don’t understand. We don’t know what condition they are in, or what condition they will be in when they come back, after this emotional trauma.”Although physicians generally refrain from discussing their pa...

The 57-year-old man looked up the long staircase that led to his rooms in the rectory, the residence he shared with three other priests. He gripped the handrail on either side of the stairs and forced his foot onto the first step. Slowly he pulled himself up the two flights of stairs to his rooms. His trip home to Boston from a conference in Asunción, Paraguay, had been rough. It was an overnight trip, but he hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Now all he wanted to do was take off his Roman collar and lie down.When he finally made it to his rooms, he looked into his bathroom mirror. His face was bright red and shiny with sweat. The red continued down his chest and onto his belly. His whole body ached. He crawled gratefully beneath his covers. What he really needed was a good night’s sleep, h...

Just in time for the holiday season, the Biden administration is offering Americans a fresh round of free at-home coronavirus tests through the Postal Service.The administration revived the dormant program in September, announcing then that households could order four free tests through a federal website, covidtests.gov. Beginning Monday, households may order an additional four tests — or eight tests if they had not ordered any in the previous round.Hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 are far below what they were during the worst stretches of the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 1.1 million people in the United States.Hospital admissions of patients with Covid ticked up this summer, but they began declining slightly in September and have held fairly steady in recent...

Are you confused about what an assisted-living facility is, and how it differs from a nursing home? And what you can expect to pay? Here’s a guide to this type of housing for older people.What is assisted living?Assisted-living facilities occupy the middle ground of housing for people who can no longer live independently but don’t need the full-time medical supervision provided at a nursing home. They might be right for those who have trouble moving about, bathing, eating or dressing, or who have Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia.Assisted-living facilities can look like luxury apartments or modest group homes, but they are staffed with aides who can help residents take a shower, get out of bed, get to the dining room, take medications, or help with other daily tasks and needs....

Assisted-living centers have become an appealing retirement option for hundreds of thousands of boomers who can no longer live independently, promising a cheerful alternative to the institutional feel of a nursing home.But their cost is so crushingly high that most Americans can’t afford them.These highly profitable facilities often charge $5,000 a month or more and then layer on extra fees at every step. Residents’ bills and price lists from a dozen facilities offer a glimpse of the charges: $12 for a blood pressure check; $50 per injection (more for insulin); $93 a month to order medications from a pharmacy not used by the facility; $315 a month for daily help with an inhaler.The facilities charge extra to help residents get to the shower, bathroom or dining room; to deliver meals to the...