As the national conversation gets underway on reforming America’s health care system, Stacey Wood, professor of psychology at Scripps College and an expert on issues related to aging and the brain, says one thing that should be changed are the recent Bush health reforms providing prescription coverage on Medicare Part D. “Not only are they too complicated for seniors to navigate, but they end up costing more than they needed to pay.”
In a research study recently released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Professor Wood and associates, including Yaniv Hanoch, Ph.D., lead author, found that older adults were less likely to identify the plan that would cost them the least annually; and, paradoxically, of all age categories surveyed, older adults were the most confident that their decisions were correct. Wood’s study concurs with recent analysis showing that less than 10% of enrollees chose the lowest-cost plan available under part D (Gruber 2009).
According to Wood: “It is curious that policymakers did not factor these possible limitations into the design of Medicare prescription drugs, but chose instead to offer beneficiaries over 50 different plans to choose from. It is particularly surprising to ask older adults to make more complex financial and medical decisions even though cognitive ability tends to decline with age. Specifically, researchers have shown that executive functioning, working memory, and the ability to simultaneously perform multiple activities—abilities that are intimately related to making sound decisions—decline with age.”
Stacey Wood is an expert on issues related to aging and the brain, including dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, decision-making, maintaining autonomy and elder fraud. During a recent sabbatical, she worked closely with the L.A.P.D. forensic investigator on crimes against the elderly. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed medical and psychological journals. She holds a PhD in clinical neuropsychology from the University of Houston.