On the Aging Beat
May 16, 2026
This weekly update of articles, opinion pieces, and other items provides free links to all cited stories.
Is it time for you to explore the aggressive conditioning discipline called parkour? Wisconsin has the nation’s highest reported death rate from falls among older adults. But many falls can be prevented through balance drills and classes — from ballroom dancing to parkour — that build strength and stability.
Retirees Expect Their Home to Be a Financial Safety Net. They Shouldn’t.
Older homeowners often don’t see the value of, or can’t afford to, maintain and renovate their homes of many years. And that can mean thousands lost when they sell. Spending a modest amount to spruce up a long-occupied home can yield big gains. All-cash sales, while appealing, may not produce your largest gain.
The Most Common Tax Traps in Retirement — and How to Avoid Them
“At its core, retirement tax planning is not only about minimizing your tax bill but also exerting control over when and how those taxes are paid,” writes Suzanne Woolley for Bloomberg. “Done well, that control can help keep income within a lower marginal bracket over time, rather than triggering spikes driven by required minimum distributions, Social Security benefits or needing to sell assets to cover large unanticipated expenses.”
“Doctors generally define frailty as having more vulnerability and less resilience to health events,” this New York Times story says. “A person who is frail is more likely to fall, for instance, and the risk of being hospitalized, needing long-term follow-up care or dying as a result of that fall is higher than in someone who is not frail.”
Common tests for frailty look at grip strength, walking speed, and other performance measures “to evaluate five key traits: weakness, slowness, exhaustion, physical inactivity and unintentional weight loss,” reporter Dana Smith writes. “If people have three, four or five of these traits, they are diagnosed as frail; having one or two qualifies them as pre-frail.”
Medicare is spending significantly less than projected on newly approved Alzheimer’s disease treatments, as patient uptake of the drugs has proven far slower than government forecasters and pharmaceutical companies anticipated. The complex administration requirements of the therapies, combined with lingering uncertainty about their real-world clinical benefits, have contributed to a pronounced gap between projected and actual expenditures.
What older adults should know about risky prescription drugs
The American Geriatrics Society maintains a current list of prescription drugs that are potentially dangerous for seniors. “The guidelines group medications into five categories,” this Washington Post piece explains, “those potentially inappropriate in all older adults; those that are especially problematic in patients with certain conditions; those that should be used with caution; those with concerning interactions with other drugs; and those that require dose adjustments based on kidney function.”
If you haven’t already done so, ask your prescribing doctors whether any of your meds are on this list.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has expanded its anti-fraud hospice program and imposed a six-month halt on enrolling new hospice providers. Part A of Medicare covers nearly all benefits for hospice, which is normally provided to people whose doctors expect to die within six months.
The agency’s statement said, “‘We’ve seen systemic and deeply troubling fraud in the hospice and home health space, with bad actors exploiting some of our most vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing money from the American taxpayer,’ said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. ‘Today we’re shutting the door on fraud—preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them. This is about protecting patients, restoring integrity, and safeguarding taxpayer dollars.’”
LeadingAge Reax: CMS Announces Six-Month Hospice, Home Health Enrollment Moratoria
Leading Age, a prominent non-profit consortium of senior support agencies, regularly finds fault with CMS policies. But it strongly endorsed the CMS freeze. “We support targeted program integrity efforts that root out bad actors and ensure legitimate providers have the resources they need to deliver quality care,” the organization said. “Short-term pauses on new provider enrollees, such as the six-month moratoria CMS announced today, can be appropriate tools to allow the agency time to develop and implement longer-term solutions.”
White House cuts $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California
“Though the administration has repeatedly criticized California’s fraud oversight, this is the first time the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has targeted payments to the state,” Politico reported. “In recent months it has withheld more than $300 million in Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota for suspect claims.”
I Started a Business at 67. It Has Been Much Better Than Retiring.
Retired Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Akst explains why he couldn’t stay that way and decided to start a new business venture in book publishing.
“Starting a business is a lot of work, but for an older entrepreneur, that can be more of a feature than a bug,” he writes. “Some of my friends, retired from impressive careers, now find themselves bored or underoccupied. Meanwhile, I deal with a continual barrage of challenges great and small, most of them welcome. People assume that I’m the one keeping my little business going, but the opposite is probably equally true.”
Akst makes a lot of sense to me, but then I still draw a paycheck at the age of 80.
Stay safe, be kind, and don’t look away.
I am the principal author of Simon & Schuster’s Get What’s Yours series of books about Medicare, Social Security, and health care. Linked In.