Tracking Down Government Aid
From The New York Times:
February 16, 2012, 6:00 am
Tracking Down Government Aid
By PAULA SPAN
Credit these folks with a shrewd slogan. The National Council on Aging and the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging are kicking off a campaign to nudzh older people into taking advantage of programs they could qualify for but don’t apply for.
We’re talking about things like reduced-cost drugs, food stamps, home care aides, transportation programs. Help with heating bills. Subsidies that lower Medicare premiums. The council analyzed a random sampling of 1,100 older adults or caregivers who’d used its BenefitsCheckUp Web site since 2010 and determined that more than 70 percent were eligible for at least one benefit they weren’t receiving.
So the council and the association are printing up thousands of booklets to be distributed through local agencies on aging and putting notices up on their Web sites and others. The slogan? “You Gave, Now Save.”
“We hope it helps get by that natural bias that this is a handout,” Sandy Markwood, C.E.O. of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, explained in an interview. “Especially with the older old, they don’t want to take what they consider ‘welfare.’ They’d rather do without.” The slogan makes the point that old people have been contributors, that “in some cases, these are programs people have invested in throughout their working lives.”
The campaign directs older adults and their caregivers to two information sources, both of which we’ve discussed here before. The Eldercare Locator makes more sense for those without computer skills, because inquirers can talk to a live person at 800-677-1116. The Locator is also online at http://www.eldercare.gov. The National Council on Aging’s BenefitsCheckUp site is Web-only at http://www.benefitscheckup.org. Both tailor their responses to an individual’s geographic location, income, veteran status and other such factors.
That matters, because programs for old people are, frankly, a confusing hodgepodge. Some benefits are the same across the country, but many vary by state or even county. Programs may be available to all, or they may involve varying income guidelines.
Older people can’t qualify for certain benefits unless their annual income is at or below the federal poverty level, which last year was a meager $10,890. (About 9 percent of those over age 60 are that poor.) But in many states, the elderly can earn up to twice that amount and still qualify for S.N.A.P., the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a.k.a. food stamps.
State pharmaceutical programs have similarly varying requirements. If you live in Maryland, for instance, you can qualify for subsidized prescriptions even with an annual income up to $32,670, three times the poverty level. Other states use other numbers.
“The goal is to move to a one-stop, no-wrong-door approach, but we’re just not there yet,” Ms. Markwood said. “You really do need a tool or a system to navigate this.”
Those tools already exist — the Eldercare Locator gets 150,000 calls a year, and almost a quarter of a million people completed a BenefitsCheckUp screening last year. But these resources remain underused.
More than 60 percent of the BenefitsCheckUp sample were eligible for food stamps but weren’t getting them. What could be more basic, at any age, than having enough to eat?
You can read more about the “You Gave, Now Save” campaign at the Web sites above, at the federal Administration on Aging Web site, or on this Facebook page.
As my Aunt Minnie used to say, you don’t ask, you don’t get.
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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”
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