Health Check: Long-Term Care, National Bladder Awareness Month, and National Liver Cancer Awareness Month

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About Long-Term Care:

Can you count on Medicare or Medicaid to cover your long-term care costs? Without proper planning, individuals can be left with few options for managing long-term care expenses. You may have heard that an estimated 70 percent of Americans 65 and older are expected to need long-term care at some point in their lives.* A new study by Lincoln Financial Group found that only a shocking 22 percent think they’ll actually need it.**

Unless you’ve experienced a long-term care event for yourself or a loved one, you may not realize the impact it can have, both financially and emotionally. According to the “2014 Cost of Care Survey,” the average cost of a private room in a nursing home can be up to $97,611 a year. With such a large price tag for long-term care, consumers should be asking, “What are my choices?” Lincoln’s study found both consumers and financial advisors underestimated the actual cost of long-term care, and consumers weren’t sure they would need it at all.

About National Bladder Health Month:

November is National Bladder Health Month, and the Urology Care Foundation is connecting, educating and empowering individuals across the country to get the facts about bladder health conditions such as Overactive Bladder and take an active role in managing their bladder health.

 

Many people, especially women are often too embarrassed to talk about their OAB symptoms, or assume there are no good treatment options. They think the occasional leakage that occurs from coughing or sneezing or that strong “gotta go” feeling is a normal result of having children or getting older and wait on average, nearly two years before mentioning anything to their health care provider. If they only knew, there are many treatment options available to relieve these symptoms, including simple behavior modifications, oral medical treatments, diet and exercise.

 

About Liver Cancer Awareness Month:

Liver cancer may be talked about less than other cancer types, but it is one of the deadliest cancers in the world, claiming the lives of more than 65 Americans each day, or nearly 25,000 Americans per year. This number has been slowly but steadily rising for several decades, despite progress in cancer research and the development of new treatments. 

 

The global impact is even greater, with liver cancer accounting for more than 600,000 deaths each year. Because symptoms typically do not appear early on, diagnosis is often not made until patients have late-stage disease that is more difficult to treat.

 

While people tend to think pink during October, it’s important that they also see green – the color of liver cancer awareness. Several common culprits – including the hepatitis B and C virus, morbid obesity and diabetes, and alcoholic cirrhosis – are directly linked to liver cancer. As these conditions reach near epidemic proportions, the incidence of liver cancer may creep up further. Currently, more than 700,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer throughout the world every year.

 

It’s important that people realize the need for improved education about liver cancer risk factors, and that they discuss with their doctors the importance of regular screenings to increase the chances of catching the disease in its early stages. Diagnosing liver cancer early is key, as a patient’s chance of survival nearly doubles if the disease is caught early.