In May, the government will no longer pay someone eligible for benefits with a mailed check. Instead, the money will be electronically deposited directly into a bank account or made accessible by a debit card. And by March 2013, the 10 million people who receive checks, out of 70 million people in all, must switch over to direct deposit or use a card.

For the government, the policy is in line with a trend toward paperless banking that will curb theft and save $120 million a year in costs.

But the first of the month won’t be the same anymore.

The change will have social and cultural impact. Some recipients have resisted it because they cannot open an account, or simply because they feel more comfortable with a check in hand.

Full story, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/business/29checkless.html?_r=2

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/health/01care.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/caring-for-the-patient-with-alzheimers/

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/who-takes-care-of-the-caregiver/

Full article:  Offering Care for the Caregiver.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/health/21chen.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384504576056192816899906.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_personalfinance

Our new national goal: Defeating Alzheimer's in 10 years

A colleague posted the following response in a professional listserve discussion about how to respond when a client asks about using online estate planning documents instead of hiring an estate planning attorney:

"I have a physician client who asked me to set up a Professional Limited Liability Company for his practice.  At our first appointment, he asked me why could he not just go to the internet and pull up the necessary forms.  I told him he was welcome to do so; just as I could go to the internet, diagnose my medical condition, and then order the prescriptions myself.

He sat down and said, 'OK, where do we start?'"

Advice that may save hundreds of dollars can be found online, in person, in print or over the phone.

http://www.pressherald.com/news/medicare-confusion_-experts-offer-help_2010-11-27.html?searchterm=Medicare

By JANET ADAMY And NEIL KING JR.

Huge budget shortfalls are prompting a handful of states to begin discussing a once-unthinkable scenario: dropping out of the Medicaid insurance program for the poor.

Elected and appointed officials in nearly a half-dozen states, including Washington, Texas and South Carolina, have publicly thrown out the idea. Wyoming and Nevada this year produced detailed studies of what would happen should they withdraw from the program. Wyoming found that Medicaid accounts for 63% of the state's nursing-home revenue.

The idea of abandoning Medicaid as a solution is so extreme that even proponents don't expect any state will follow through, but officials are floating the discussions because dire budgetary pressures have forced them to at least look at even the most drastic options.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704444304575628603406482936.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

From an e-mail today from From Rose Mary Zapor, Esq. of The Zapor Law Office, P.C. in Denver.

The quote below is the last part of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued in 1863.  Since we continue in war and have been in an era of political division, I thought the sentiments expressed by our 16th President are appropriate to the season.  May we all experience a season of peace and harmony during this Thanksgiving Season.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

By The President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State

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