Will you retire?
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There’s an awful lot written about when you retire or how to retire but what if you aren’t planning to retire? How do you plan for that?
News
Marriage enables better lives for cancer patients
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If you want to survive cancer, get married. That’s the result of a recent study published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology that found that single patients were 53 percent less likely to receive appropriate therapy than married patients.Â
When should your child have an estate plan
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Most people wouldn’t necessarily think of their 18 year old child as an adult but in the eyes of the law he or she is with few exceptions.Â
What you need to know about the Affordable Care Act
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By now you know that open enrollment started this past Tuesday for the online exchanges that handle Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act). There’s a lot of confusion about Obamacare so I’ll try to answer some questions about who needs it and who doesn’t.Â
Honoring someone's end-of-life decisions
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If you’ve created your advanced directive, notified your loved ones of your decision and obtained their buy-in, named a heath care surrogate and made sure your physician knew of your desire, you’d expect to get compliance with those very real and very legal decision but the Florida Health Care Administration has cited 15 Florida nursing homes with failure to honor advanced directives, a violation of Florida state law.Â
Is palliative care for you?
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Most people are aware of hospice care and what it pertains to but a closely related medical specialty is relatively unknown. Palliative care seeks to address the multiple ways that illness affects a person whether the effects are physical, financial, spiritual etc. The focus is on treating the symptoms of the disease or the side effects of treatment so that the patient can remain comfortable.Â
What you should know about the flu if you are a Baby Boomer or older
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In China this week, a 41-year old man died of rabies. Over 2000 people die of rabies each year in China even though China is the world’s largest purchaser of rabies vaccine. Wound cleansing and immunization within a few hours of contact can prevent the disease according to the World Health Organization. For the Chinese, the cure can cost up to a month’s wages which probably explains at least part of the reason for the fatalities.  Now you know I didn’t bring up this rabies incident because I’m concerned about a non-issue like rabies in America where the number of deaths associated with rabies each year resides around one or two individuals who usually were unaware they were exposed to rabies. I bring up rabies because it is largely curable and still people die from it…kind of like the flu.
Where you live matters
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The United States covers a very large area so it’s mostly impossible to make all-encompassing statements. For instance, the average American lives to 77.6 years and overall ranks 33 in the world for longevity but where you live matters because there is a deep disparity between parts of the county.Â
Ending a marriage can throw a wrench in your retirement plans
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It used to be that older people just didn’t get divorced. Of course it’s not that they never got divorced; it’s that the incidence of divorce among people 50 and over was very small compared to the rest of the population.Â