A recent HealthView Services analysis found as of this year, there is a transition in the income brackets used to determine how much older Americans will pay for their Medicare Part B and Part D coverage, reports CNBC . The highest earners may wind up paying 200 percent higher premiums for Parts B and D compared to someone in the first bracket. Drivers of this trend include the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which reduced the ranges for the third, fourth, and fifth income brackets, pushing some retirees into the next bracket and hiking their Medicare costs. This year, premiums for Medicare Part B are $134 monthly for singles with a modified adjusted gross income of $85,000 or less in 2016. Premiums start climbing outside of those income levels, while Part D beneficiaries also pay additional costs on top of their plan premiums if their 2016 modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) surpassed $85,000. Also affecting Medicare is the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which mandates that beginning next year, individuals with incomes exceeding $500,000 will pay higher Medicare surcharges, which the Medicare Rights Center estimates will comprise 85 percent of their program costs, up from 80 percent under current statutes. Higher-income retirees can try to control Medicare premiums by planning out their income sources before applying for the program. For example, income from a Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) plan does not count toward one's MAGI, and will not raise Medicare premiums.

May 1 is the official start of Older Americans Month, reports the Administration for Community Living . President Trump announced that this month is when "we recognize and celebrate those Americans who have spent decades providing for the next generation and building the greatness of our nation." Trump also noted, "Older Americans play critical roles in helping support their adult children, grandchildren, and extended families. They work and volunteer for businesses and organizations that drive our economy and serve our communities. Most importantly, our seniors mentor future generations and instill core American values in them. Their guidance preserves our heritage and the invaluable lessons of the past." Materials, activity ideas, and resources to help people celebrate Older Americans Month are available here .

Many employers could better address challenges by considering what they could do rather than what they should do, writes Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino in the Harvard Business Review . She describes an experiment in which she gave participants ethical challenges where there seemed to be no good choice, and determined that those who were asked what they could do produced more creative solutions than those asked what they should do. "Approaching problems with a 'should' mindset gets us stuck on the trade-off the choice entails and narrows our thinking on one answer, the one that seems most obvious," Gino says. "But when we think in terms of 'could,' we stay open-minded and the trade-offs involved inspire us to come up with creative solutions." Gino also notes maverick or "rebel" employees often tend to disagree, "but some tension is a positive thing, because it can help get people to move past should to could. When we experience conflict, research finds, we generate more original solutions than when we are in a more cooperative mood. When there is tension, we also tend to scrutinize options and deeply explore alternatives, which leads to novel insights." Gino cites research that found when people are asked to meet two seemingly clashing goals, their ideas are more innovative.

A new study from the AFL-CIO found workplace deaths have climbed in the wake of the Trump administration's repeal or abandonment of regulations and policies designed to protect employees, reports Business Insurance . Bureau of Labor Statistics data estimated that 5,190 U.S. workers died on the job in 2016, up from 4,836 the year before, and the job fatality rate rose to 3.6 per 100,000 workers from 3.4 per 100,000 workers. "President Trump has moved aggressively on his deregulatory agenda, repealing and delaying job safety and other rules, and proposing deep cuts in the budget and the elimination of worker safety and health training and other programs," the AFL-CIO says. Workplace violence is currently the second-leading cause of workplace death, rising from 703 worker fatalities to 866, and was responsible for more than 27,000 lost-time injuries. "More workers are dying from workplace violence incidents than from falls, which is very sobering," notes AFL-CIO official Margaret Seminario. In the final weeks of the previous administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it would initiate rule-making for a federal standard to protect healthcare and social assistance workers who are disproportionately affected by workplace violence. But Trump has "sidelined" this effort by moving it off its main regulatory agenda and placing it on a long-term actions. "This obviously does not bode well for the federal government taking action to put in place a standard," Seminario says.

A study published in JMIR Medical Informatics details how a smart home prototype could help people with dementia dress themselves via automated assistance, reports ScienceDaily . The DRESS system combines sensors and image recognition to track progress using barcodes on apparel to identify the type, location, and orientation of a piece of clothing. DRESS involves structuring a five-drawer dresser topped with a tablet, camera, and motion sensor, with one piece of clothing per drawer, to follow an individual's dressing preferences. A skin conductance sensor worn as a bracelet tracks a subject's stress levels and related frustration. A caregiver initiates DRESS and monitors progress from an app, while the person with dementia receives an audio prompt in the caregiver's voice to open the top drawer, which lights up. The clothes in the drawers have barcodes that are detected by the camera, and if an item is put on properly, the system prompts the person to move to the next step. Should the system detect an error or lack of activity, audio prompts are used for correction and encouragement. If it detects ongoing issues or an increase in stress levels, the system can alert a caregiver to provide assistance. The prototype can identify clothing orientation and position, and deduce one's current state of dressing. In initial phases of putting on shirts or pants, DRESS accurately detected participants' clothing 384 of 388 times. However, it could not consistently identify when one completed donning an item of clothing, missing these final cues in 10 of 22 cases for shirts and five of 22 cases for pants.

A study published in BMJ Open reviewed studies on nearly 30,000 people who experienced anxiety between the ages of 30 and 65 to correlate the later development of dementia, reports Newsweek . The researchers found a connection between moderate to severe anxiety and the onset of dementia in later life. It is their belief that the stress response that anxiety causes in the body could make brain cells age faster, activating degenerative changes in the central nervous system. This could subsequently increase a person's vulnerability to dementia, although a direct causal link was not observed. The team also noted it is unclear whether reducing anxiety in middle age would mitigate the risk of dementia, with further investigation needed to understand whether treatment for anxiety, including drugs, talking therapies, and mindfulness-based interventions and meditation practices proven to ease anxiety in midlife could reduce this risk. "What we do know is that changes in the brain can begin more than 10 years before dementia symptoms emerge," says the Alzheimer's Society's Dr. James Pickett. "As well as anxiety, there are other complex mental health issues that can be seen in the early stages of dementia, and we need further research to unpick the relationship between these."

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is encouraging community-based organizations to become service suppliers for the newly-expanded Medicare diabetes prevention program model, reports Healthcare Finance News . This allows providers to bill CMS for treating Medicare patients with prediabetes and, because the service is free for qualifying beneficiaries, healthcare organizations can use it to reach individuals who might not have otherwise come in for a screening. The model is for community organizations and providers to establish structured behavior change intervention programs to curb the onset of type 2 diabetes among Medicare beneficiaries who have an indication of prediabetes. CMS said that is now enabling community-based organizations to join traditional healthcare providers in enrolling as Medicare suppliers of these health behavior change services. They may provide evidence-based diabetes prevention services after earning certification from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The model is forecast to save the Medicare program more than $180 million by keeping beneficiaries healthy and avoiding new cases of diabetes. Medicare spends more than $104 billion per year treating people with this disease, CMS said, and more than one-fourth of seniors in the United States have type 2 diabetes. This is the first preventative services test model released by the CMS Innovation Center to expand nationally.

Community groups, hospitals, government agencies, and nonprofits throughout the U.S. are bolstering their support for some of the primary caregivers of adults dealing with Alzheimer's and other chronic diseases, reports Kaiser Health News . "We know that involvement with art improves well-being," says Carolyn Halpin-Healy with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "In our own research for persons with dementia, we see a reduction in apathy. For caregivers, we see less isolation and a reduction in stress." Halpin-Healy is co-founder of the museum's Arts & Minds program, which exposes older adults and their caregivers to art. Concurrently, 42 states have passed laws requiring hospitals and other nursing communities to train caregivers who perform medical tasks, and to register them as the "caregiver" when care recipients go into or out of hospitals or nursing communities. The national Care Transitions Intervention model at the University of Colorado trains coaches to help caregivers switch their recipients to home care. These coaches typically are social workers, nurses, or others hired by hospitals and other communities to work directly with caregivers. Meanwhile, California-based Dignity Health Systems has teamed with the Santa Barbara Foundation to supply caregiver coaches. Dignity's Kathleen Sullivan says 1,000 caregivers are being coached at any given time.

A new Gallup poll of 1,509 adults found more older Americans are using Facebook, while the number of users in the 18 to 29 age bracket has declined, reports The Hill . The biggest increase was for adults ages 50 to 64, of whom 52 percent used Facebook this year, versus 34 percent in 2011. People 65 and older who use Facebook also rose from 18 percent in 2011 to 32 percent in 2018. Adults in the 30 to 49 age range increased their use by a more modest rate, but are only a few percentage points away from using Facebook as frequently as young adults. Furthermore, 65 percent of Americans are currently active on Facebook, an 8 percent gain from 2011.

Researchers in academia and the private sector are devising computer systems that can analyze communication between bosses and workers and spot problems that cause tension, unhappiness, and inefficiency, the Wall Street Journal reports. IBM Corp.'s Watson artificial intelligence (AI) platform, for example, can compare an executive's email against models and figure out its emotional range and the sentiments that are being exhibited. The AI can then point out patterns in the messages that the executive may not be aware of, like repeatedly couching feedback in negative language. "At a big company, there's a lot of top-down communication going on, and we're using it to understand how we set the right climate and culture," comments Tina Marron-Partridge, global leader of talent and engagement at IBM. True Talk, another system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lets clients practice difficult conversations by speaking with an AI.