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Plan services 

Doctor Choice: Any doctor

Specialist Referral Required: No

Primary Care Physician Office Visit $ 15.00 per office visit

Specialist Office Visit $ 30.00 per office visit

There is not a directory for this plan as plan members are allowed to go to any Medicare-approved provider that accepts the terms, conditions, and rates of the plan.

Hospital Services:

Inpatient Hospital Care: $240.00 days 1 - 17/$0.00 days 18 - 90 maximum 

Outpatient Hospital Care: 20% per visit

Part D Prescription Drug:

Part D Annual Deductible $0.00

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!

2. Learned this from a tourist guide in New Orleans.  If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you . . . chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy.  The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. DON'T DO THIS!) The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.

5. A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:

A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat.
B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars!
C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out.  IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)

6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is
especially true at NIGHT!)

7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN!  The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times! ; And even then , it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, Preferably in a zigzag pattern!

8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP. It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.

9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door, just call the police to investigate.

Richmond man lives to 112 on junk food 
Experts say genes won out over diet of mainly sausage and waffles
 
By Jeff Wilson, Associated Press
Inside Bay Area - 9/02/2006

George Johnson of Richmond, considered California's oldest living person at 112 and the state's last surviving World War I veteran, had experts shaking their heads over his junk food diet.

"He had terrible bad habits. He had a diet largely of sausages and waffles," Dr. L. Stephen Coles, founder of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Friday. 

The 5-foot-7, 140-pound Johnson died of pneumonia Wednesday at his Richmond home. 

"A lot of people think or imagine that your good habits and bad habits contribute to your longevity,"Coles said. "But we often find it is in the genes rather than lifestyle." 

Johnson, who was blind, lived alone until his 110th birthday when a caregiver began helping him. Johnson built the Richmond house he lived in by hand in 1935. He got around using a walker in recent years. 

Johnson was the only living Californian considered a "supercentenarian," a designation for those ages 110 or older, Coles said. His group is now in the process of validating a Los Angeles candidate who claims to be 112 years old. 

Coles participated in an autopsy Thursday that was designed to study Johnson's health. 

"All of his organs were extremely youthful. They could have been the organs of someone who was 50 or 60, not 112. Clearly his genes had some secrets," Coles said. 

"Everything in his body that we looked at was clean as a whistle, except for his lungs with the pneumonia," Coles said. "He had no heart disease, he had no cancer, no diabetes and no Alzheimer's. 

"This is a mysterious case that someone could be so healthy from a pathology point of view and that there is no obvious cause of death." 

The family was in favor of an autopsy. Relatives said Johnson wanted them to allow it if it would help science. 

Born May 1, 1894, Johnson's father managed the Baltimore and Ohio Railway station in Philadelphia. 

Johnson was working in 1917 as a mail sorter for the U.S. Post Office when he was drafted into the Army. The war ended a year later, and he never served in combat. 

Two years later, he and his wife moved to Central California. 

"It was a great adventure in those days. We were young and wanted the experience," Johnson said in a March interview with the Contra Costa Times. 

The couple settled in Fresno and remained there until 1935, when they bought property in Richmond. They used lumber salvaged from dismantled buildings to build their house. 

During World War II, Johnson worked at the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond and later managed the heating plant at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland. 

He remained in good health and continued driving until he was 102, when his vision began to fail. 

Johnson's wife died in 1992 at the age of 92. The couple had no children. 

For more information on the Gerontology Research Group, visit  http://www.grg.org

For the 47 million Americans without health insurance, each day is a struggle to find a way to pay for prescription drugs. Older adults, who are often prescribed several medications at a time, can find it even more difficult to pay medical bills. Despite the start of Medicare Part D in 2006, the elderly still spend thousands of dollars a year on prescription drug costs. What many people don't know is that they may be eligible to receive their medications for free.

Len Tillem has been a practicing attorney since being admitted to the State Bar of California in 1972. The Len Tillem Program is heard on KGO AM-810, Sundays from 4-7pm and now Len Tillem is on KGO radio daily from 12:05 to 1:00 p.m.

Len answers general legal questions, provides legal advice, and solves legal problems, live and on the air.  Len Tillem's law practice, Len Tillem and Associates, concentrates on Elder Law. Elder Law is a specialized field of law focusing on the unique needs of the elderly. 

Len Tillem & Associates  of Sonoma, California, is a law firm practicing in the fields of Estate Planning, Elder Law and Medi-Cal Planning, Trust Administration and Probate, and Personal Injury.

Death --
A wonderful way to explain it.

Contributed by: Mr. Jim Knudsen

The latest news on the Alzheimers disease comes from a Johns Hopkins University study that found that the more varied the activities you engage in, the better off your mind will be in the long run.

Researchers followed 3,375 men and women over the age of 65 from 1992 to 2000. During the study, they asked the participants how often they engaged in 15 different types of activities and how much time they spent doing each. Included were walking, household chores, lawn mowing, raking, gardening, hiking, jogging, biking, exercise cycling, dancing, aerobics, bowling, golfing, general exercise, and swimming. All told, 480 of the study participants developed some form of dementia.

Those who engaged in only one type of activity or none at all accounted for 130 of the cases while those who did four or more of the activities accounted for only 84 cases. The study was published in the April 1, 2005 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology, April 1, 2005

Alzheimer's support