Welcome to Baby Boomer Health Care

This app is so handy to use. It’s compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad and there is an Android app you can download. The company also states they are currently working on making it possible to download the app from other phones.  I’ve downloaded it to my iPhone.  When I go to the grocery store, I look at the ingredients on the back of every box and every can, before I put it into my grocery cart. It used to be very time consuming and sometimes the print is so small I can barely read it.

But now my life has been made a lot easier, at least when it comes to grocery shopping.  Now when I go to the store, I go to my app “Fooducate” and when I look at a box of cereal I scan it with my iPhone and Fooducate tells me about the cereal.  I find out how much sugar is in a serving, if it is really healthy for me or not and actually has an “alternative” cereal that is more healthy for me.

I’m always amazed at how deceiving a food product really is.  The name of the product will make you think it’s really good for us.  For instance,  the cereal  may contain the words “whole grain” in its title but, in reality, it isn’t 100% whole grain.  There may be a small quantity but I would have thought it was 100% whole grain. With this app I can find out what it is really made of and how much of the “good stuff” is in there and how much of the “bad stuff” is in there.  It tells me if it contains trans fat and/or BHT.  Fooducate will even rate the food for you. 

The app has about 160,000 products and they update it continuously.  It was initially created by dieticians and concerned parents. It appears to be a totally objective analysis.  The company claims it is not associated with any food manufacturers and the company doesn’t sell any pills, supplements or diets.

I really recommend trying this app out.  I have been amazed at how wrong I am about certain products I’ve been buying for years and the app has done all the hard work.  I love this one.   

Dr. David Brailer was recently interviewed by the Wall Street Journal regarding the idea of individuals having access to their own electronic health (EHR)records.  If you look around our website you will find  many EHR articles directed to healthcare professionals regarding setting up their offices with EHRs.  The government is even providing a cash incentive for those healthcare providers who set up an EHR system and follow specific guidelines set up by the government to reach “meaningful use.”  

What does this mean for us babyboomers?  There are definite advantages and perhaps some disadvantages.  A couple of the advantages are that we could obtain access to our medical records so that we will have information regarding medications, lab reports, x-rays, etc., no matter where we are.  It also means the possibility of going to an office who is unfamiliar with your situation yet would be able access all your records with a couple of “clicks” on the keyboard.

The negative of this is probably obvious.  The security and privacy aspect.  There are some concerns regarding information being hacked into but, this is also true of paper chart keeping. So, it isn’t an issue to be feared only if your records are kept electronically.

The Wall Street Journal refers to Dr. Brailer as  America’s first digital health czar and from my listening to the interview,  it appears he is very supportive of having medical records available to us electronically and he added that he felt it would be us babyboomers who push the EHR’s through the system to become as commonly used as emails.  

I think it is a great idea and I believe it would cut down on mistakes made by healthcare professionals. What do you think about it?

I think a lot of us babyboomers have been worried about whether or not there would be any Social Security left for us when we hit retirement age.  Well, in the July/August issue of AARP, Liz Weston dispels a lot of those fears.

According to Ms. Weston, although Social Security’s finances need “some work”, the remedies are not drastic and several proposals have been forwarded.  If these proposals are combined and put into place, the program will be  back on financially,  firm ground. 

Many of us have felt that Social Security’s assets are not worth anything but according to Weston, we haven’t done our homework.  Apparently, if we look a little closer we will find that any surplus payroll taxes are used to purchase special-issue, interest paying Treasury bonds and are totally guaranteed and backed by the federal government, just as they are for other Treasury bondholders. The Treasury is scheduled to pay back these bonds shortly.  

Ms. Weston states in her article that even if there were no changes made to Social Security it could continue to pay full benefits through 2037.  

If Weston is correct, and she has been writing about Social Security for at least twenty years, we are in better shape than I thought.  Of course, I hope  proposals are put into action to ensure a more financially secure retirement for future generations.  But, it is good to hear something other than the typical doomsday scenarios presented to us on a daily basis.

Anytime I come across any updates regarding our Social Security benefits, I’ll let you know.  But, maybe, just maybe, we are a little better off than we thought.