Health & Wellbeing

AARP Wisconsin conveyed a message to legislators at budget hearings this spring: The state could save money and help more older people live at home by investing moderate amounts in services for the aging and support for family caregivers. The idea is to reduce reliance on more expensive programs, such as Medicaid-funded nursing home care.

When the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee holds hearings this spring to discuss the biennial budget proposed by Gov. Scott Walker (R), AARP volunteers will be there to support key issues.

By David Lewellen

By Joanne Cleaver

At a recent press conference in Lake Geneva, Governor Walker thanked AARP Wisconsin for our great teamwork with the state Department of Health Services (DHS) in promoting the latest initiative in the Dementia-Capable Wisconsin program – The Dementia-Friendly Employers Toolkit – which provides employers with the tools they need to support workers who are caring for a loved one with dementia.

For many Wisconsin seniors, especially those in rural areas where cell phone service is unreliable or unavailable, having basic telephone landline service can be their only connection to the outside world. Losing that service would be a health and safety issue for these people.

AARP Driver Safety is celebrating Older Americans Month by offering a $5 online course to AARP members and non-members from May 1 through May 31, 2013. The course normally costs $15.95 for AARP members and $19.95 for nonmembers.

Would you walk away from $20 or more, month after month after month? Probably not, yet two-thirds of eligible Wisconsin seniors do just that by not claiming their FoodShare benefits.

Wisconsin has the opportunity to make health care available to as many as 211,000 additional Wisconsin residents by 2022. We can do this by extending Medicaid coverage to most low-income adults not already served by Medicare.

AARP and its Wisconsin members have strongly supported Wisconsin’s Family Care program from the very beginning. AARP supported Governor Thompson when he signed the program into law in 1999 as a five-county pilot program to provide for the long-term care needs of our low-income residents.