Mothers and injured children evacuate Gaza, arrive in Texas for critical medical care amid war chaos
They are evacuees from Gaza who arrived at DFW Airport this afternoon in front of a large crowd of well-wishers.
There were Palestinian flags and welcoming signs carried by dozens of people who wrapped around the doors for DFW Airport's international arrivals when two families walked through to cheers and chants.
"She said the first feeling she got was a feeling of safety," said Nisreen Hajaj, with HEAL Palestine, who translated.
It's a journey that got the young mother out of harm's way in Gaza as well as another, whose translator says she had to leave other children behind and has lost an extraordinary number of relatives since the war began.
The two injured boys are in Texas to receive treatment that would be impossible back home.
Anwar is 14 years old and on crutches after losing part of a leg while fleeing an air strike.
Zuhair is 6 years old and has severe injuries from a bomb that his mother says destroyed their family's home.
"He has an injury to his hand and unfortunately, an injury to his abdomen as well," said Hajaj.
These two children are among 11 who arrived at airports on Sunday across the U.S. with no date set to return.
From DFW, it's off to San Antonio for these mothers, where they will stay with host families while their children receive free medical treatment through the organization HEAL Palestine.
"We are sitting by TV screens all day watching this unfold in front of her eyes, feeling helpless of not being able to do anything to stop the war," said Hajaj. "This is the message that we want to get across that this is not these children's fault."
The organization has helped 30 injured children since the beginning of the war to get the help they need here in America.
In some cases, like Anwar's, it may be prosthetics, or even further amputations. A young boy, who's been through so much, but still managed a smile on his way, hopefully to a better life.
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31 minutes ago
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Caregiving is the $600 billion crisis hiding in plain sight
With a rapidly aging workforce, budgeting time and money for caregiving has become even more crucial for the average American. On this episode of Decoding Retirement, host Robert "Bob" Powell speaks with MIT AgeLab director Joe Coughlin, who shares his unique perspective on the advancements and challenges that await retirees. Coughlin also discusses the impact of unpaid caregiving on family finances, maintaining cash flow after retirement, and the financial benefits of residing in livable communities. Yahoo Finance's Decoding Retirement is hosted by Robert Powell. Find more episodes of Decoding Retirement at Because there is that coming care gap, whether our families are too busy or living at a distance, we're going to need that assistance. Technology is going to be a helping hand to make that happen. So while there are all kinds of science fiction things to creep us out, I am very optimistic that technology is going to enable us to live longer, better, healthier lives. The world is rapidly aging and given that the effects on caregiving, on transportation, on housing, on your retirement plan, they're changing rapidly as well. And here to talk with me about that is Doctor Joe Coughlin, he's the director of the MIT AIDS lab. Joe, welcome. Hey, it's great to be here, Bob. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure. So, so two things, Joe. Our goal with with decoding retirement is to make this a person's first and last stop in their search for knowledge about retirement planning. So thank you for being here because you're going to help us accomplish that, that mission. Appreciate it. You're always a delight to work with and you know more than even most of the experts, so great totalk to you. Well, no one knows as much as you, and I want to start here, um, with caregiving and well-being. Um, it has been described at times as a $600 billion problem, especially when you think about all the unpaid caregivers in this country. Uh, you study caregiving, uh, lots to talk about there, right? Yep, no, absolutely. I mean, I want you to imagine this, Bob, in the United States or North America alone, 1 in 4 American families is providing upwards of 20 to 25 hours per week to care for an older loved one. That doesn't count children or people with special needs. So caregiving is, shall we say, a, a in the shadows, that is a right now a personal problem, but should become a public issue. what advice do you have for either people who are caregivers or perhaps even recipients of care? No, absolutely, you know, this is one of the things that retirement planning has, I don't wanna say it's completely dropped the ball, but it has defined it profoundly as only a financial if you are planning for your own retirement uh individually or as a couple, yes, absolutely, you're gonna need the financial wherewithal, the financial security to provide the care you need, even if your loved one is going to provide it. You know, the number one caregiver is typically your spouse, and sadly for you and I are more likely, Bob, sadly for our wives, it is more likely the wife caring for the husband. But after her is the adult so while both those caregivers, the, the spouse and the adult daughter would certainly appreciate and need a sort of robust financial uh plan and and and uh bank account, that's only part of it. In fact, I would even suggest it's only 50% of have to start planning out who's going to be providing the hands-on care. More likely than not, your spouse is going to need her own care, and your adult daughter, typically, even if you have adult sons, are going to be busy or distant or whatever it might be. So how are you?Going to fill in the gaps, everything from adult daycare to healthcare to home care, who's gonna do the little things? Perhaps as it advances to get you dressed to have feed, uh, you know, of food on the table or frankly, just to take out the trash on the simple yeah, financial security is part of it, but identifying, here's a scenario, Bob, identifying the person or service that you would trust to go into your mother's home when you're not there. Mom is 80 something years old, she's not cognitively as sharp as she once was. Physically may not be as well. Who do you trust to go in there to care for her?So it's not just a matter of having a bank account, it's a matter for having the actual service or the face that you would trust to do that. Yeah, um, you, you mentioned, uh, this, uh, notion of it's not a financial matter, but you've written recently, I think that families lose half their wealth in the eight years before a dementia diagnosis. Uh, obviously, so now it's twofold, right? It is financial and all the things that you just mentioned. Yeah, no, uh, some really good work done by my colleagues at the MIT Asia Lab, Luo Quinto, and folks at the AARP, Doctor Julie Miller, uh, came up with this metaphor of the leaky pipe, and years before the diagnosis of dementia, bad happen. Uh, you know, maybe bills are not paid, maybe, uh, crazy things are purchased, if you will, that are well without outside the budget. Sadly, maybe we become more susceptible to scams and seeing that money leak out, shall we say of that euphemistic so as we start to see caregiving as an issue, it starts far earlier than than we think. And it's not just a matter of like, oh, there's an issue, let's intervene. This is profoundly emotional. When do you have the, the, the courage and the opportunity to tell a spouse or a parent that, Dad, you're not quite OK, I need to step know, we fought for our independence as teenagers. We fight even more, shall we say, passionately as we are older. And so that's, it's a very hard spot where families find themselves in the crosshairs of emotional, physical, and financial stress. Yeah, I, I'm often fond of saying that as we age, right, our parents become our children and, and the children become the parents and uh someone needs to take charge of some of these decisions and, and maybe, uh,And, and maybe the places to do that in a family meeting perhaps. Yeah,in family meetings, but I have to tell you, Bob, I don't wanna uh get our, our viewers depressed, but I, I stumbled on some data that that really did depress estimates suggest that one quarter of families out there are estranged from their adult children. So as we talk about caregiving, one of the things that we've done at the labs, we've done research on, uh, who do you think is gonna take care of you? And without question, it's, well, my partner, my spouse, or my adult children. Well, by the way, only of the vast majority who said are going to care for them. Less than 30% actually had the conversation that that person knows they're going to care for them. But imagine where 1 in 4 or maybe even a little bit more than 1 in 4 are estranged, not talking, living at a distance from their loved ones. That means that we have a coming care gap in the United States that is going to make the current issue look, shall we say, like the norm, but the will be not just financial, it will be a profound public problem as well. Joe, I, I, I wanna, uh, let you know that my wife used to ask me how my day was, and she stopped doing that because I would quote something depressing news like you just said to us. And she said, I've had invitedto parties, right? I've had it with your depressing news. Um, talk a little bit about as we think about the future of homes and smart homes and perhaps social robots. Are, are we, are we on the verge of technology helping solve some of the problems here? You know, absolutely. My, my colleague Dr. Chai Wu Lee leads a whole program at the Asia Lab called Home Logistics or Home as Service. What you imagine now your home no longer simply a place to keep the rain off or a place to live, but frankly a platform of services. We found during COVID that all those little services that they crazy kids, the Gen Z younger millennials were doing life by app, became effectively a virtual assisted living for rides, for food delivery, telemedicine, pharma delivery, and the like. So with respect to robots and other technologies, so the so-called internet of things where shall we say,Everything begins to watch and everything begins to talk to itself. Yes, they are already here in small amounts. I would ask everyone listening to ask yourself how many strangers are in your house right now? I, you know, as you mentioned certain names, speakers may light up or that constant familiar face that knocks on your door and drops off a these services are already evolving, and I would suggest to you, Bob, that this is a new cost in retirement that no one is thinking about. It's not in anyone's line item, but yet it is part of the run rate of you mentioned robots, which is one of my favorite topics, because these technologies are shall we say, getting between cool and creepy. So yes, there will be robots out there that will be, uh, keeping you abreast of your favorite recipe, your favorite program, but also reminding you of your medication. Also maybe reminding you that in my case, Joe, you know, put the ice cream away, you might want to try a watermelon dessert also the social robots, some that will engage you in a game or to talk and can tell by the timbre of your voice. Are you well? Are you happy enough?But the part that's going to be coming soon, and I guess I would say soon is in a decade, maybe even less by some estimates, are going to be robots that actually do work around the house. So whether it's the, you know, the usual names like Figu or Tesla and others that are out there, they're envisioning robots probably for the cost of a medium sized car, medium sized will fold the laundry, clean the house, may even down the road be able to prepare your meal. And when I say it's the price of a car, I'm sure a lot of people are shuddering going, where the heck am I gonna get that amount of money? Well, think about the following. When people retire, one of the most, shall we say, popular retirement gifts, it's not just the the new car? I could see in about a decade or so people go, well, I got the car and now I've got the robot, or frankly, I think a lot of this will be by subscription. You may not own any of it, but you'll be paying on a monthly rate, which also has profound implications for your cash flow inretirement. Yeah. So, Joe, speaking of technology in the home, uh, we can't avoid talking about AI, artificial intelligence. Yeah, no, AI these days is the topic everywhere and about everything. It is definitely going to be ubiquitous in your retirement. Now we were talking about technology in the home, so AI is going to be, shall we say, seamless and as Arthur C. Clarke said, the best technology is that which is invisible and seemingly works like magic. Well, AI will be there to remind you of your meds. It'll be there to monitor. Are you sleeping late because you were out partying the night before, or you're not?Sleeping very well. Are you having your coffee later than usual? It'll enable your caregiver and a formal and family, if you will, to be able to intervene, to be proactive before there's an issue such as your gait has changed, your walk is a little different, you're likely to fall rather than having a house that says, oh my gosh, help, he's falling, he can't get once you're on the floor, we frankly have other issues. So AI is gonna be there to, shall we say, be a, a caregiver's aide, and augmented intelligence to age well. And of course, robots, when we talk about robots, most people think about the the physical nature of robots, but behind that physical thing of whatever they're doing is AI. Yeah. Uh, Joe, I, it, it would probably fair to say that you don't fear the future of technology. Uh, should average people, us mere mortals, fear this notion of a robot telling us to take our meds and whatnot, or should we relish this opportunity? I, I, I think, I think we should relish it on a number of fronts. One,Technology moves quickly for a few, but by the time it gets to most of us, many of the bugs have gotten out. Most of the time it's gotten more affordable, not always affordable, but more affordable. But the other issue is is that because there is that coming care gap, whetherOur families are too busy or living at a distance, we're going to need that assistance. If we want to stay in the homes where we that we love, you know, so-called the aging in place where our marriage, our mortgage and our memories are, technology is gonna be a helping hand to make that while there are all kinds of science fiction things to creep us out, I am very optimistic that technology is going to enable us to live longer, better, healthier lives. One thing, Bob, as a footnote though, we should start preparing for that being a new cost in we've never thought about it before, but suddenly start thinking of your subscriptions, your cell service, your speakers, your smart devices, and all the subscriptions you've signed up for for your refrigerator to talk to your toaster, to talk to your car, to have the food delivered. That's an invisible thing on your credit card that now needs a line item in your retirement plan. we're gonna take a short break and when we come back, we'll talk more about retirement planning, longevity planning, and transportation and livable communities. Don't go back to Decoding Retirement. I'm talking to Doctor Joe Coughlin. He's the director of the MIT AIDS lab and one of my favorite people in the world, because among other things, Joe, you get to see the future in ways that most people don't, so it's always a pleasure to talk to you about what we can expect and what we should be doing, you spend a lot of time thinking about transportation. I've had an opportunity to go to the MIT AI lab and drive Miss Daisy, although poorly, I must admit, I think I had a number of, uh, animated children as their balls went into the road. But, uh, transportation is a big issue. I, I think I might have mentioned in the past that I'm the, I'm the chair of our local senior center and, uh, by golly, it is, I think our number one issue is getting people to medical appointments or hairdressers or the grocery store and whatnot. So,What can we expect in the future as it pertains to transportation? Now, transportation, as you know, Bob, is one of my favorite topics. In fact, it is the very topic that got me into aging and retirement in the first place. I, uh, became a, shall we say, a sex in older drivers, an issue, uh, trapped somewhere between humor and horror in many transportation is one of those overlooked issues that people simply take for granted. Let's give us some context. Do you know that 70% of Americans over the age of 50 live either in suburban or rural areas where alternatives to driving either do not exist or they're just too difficult to use?Here's another little factory that few people think about, and by the way, even financial advisors get this wrong. What are the top three costs for a couple over 65? And immediately people yell out healthcare and housing. Well, they're not incorrect, but they are incomplete. Number 1 cost is housing, number 3 cost is health care, number 2 is so one of the things we also forget is that transportation is not just about getting you where you need to be, it is a vital part of quality of life. It's about getting to the things you want, the things that make you smile. You will get to the doctor's office. You will somehow get food delivered or you will get to the grocery as you know, Bob, one of my favorite uh uh stories I like to tell us, will you get an ice cream cone? Will you get the thing on a hot summer night that makes you smile that you don't need, you don't want to bother your adult daughter or a neighbor that you don't talk to on a regular basis, saying, hey, will you take me out to Dairy Queen for a saucer? That's not going to happen. But those little things are the things that make quality of life in older adulthood possible and so is one of the great missing links to a quality retirement plan and frankly in many of our communities. Yeah. Uh, so I want to turn my attention to, uh, my favorite topic, retirement and longevity planning, and obviously you spend as much time thinking about this as the other topics, so, uh, give us the brain dump. Well, I, I, I, this is gonna sound a lot to the audience like a word game, but I, I, I think if you think about it, you realize that it is not. There are many examples of very wealthy people out there who have not done very well in retirement. That is, they've not done very well in terms of caregiving or social connection or their, their health uh uh did not fare very they had a really strong bank account. What I'd like people to start thinking about is not simply retirement planning, but retirement preparation. So absolutely maintain that dedication and that discipline, if you will, to saving enough for financial security and advisors, employers and whatnot can help you with what that secret number might the difference between planning and preparing to make it always relate, in my case, Bob, as you know, always back to food, is kind of like grow is writing a shopping list. A shopping list is a until that food is in my cart, in my cabinet, or frankly on the stove, I'm not eating. So I would ask people to start connecting the money to what they're going to need. So if it's transportation, have you identified what those alternatives are going to be, who they're going, where those services are going to be, and how much they're going to cost? If you think about caregiving, having a long-term care plan or self annuitizing long term care makes infinite now that you got the checkbook, who's going to do it? What kind of services will you need? Do you even know what a geriatric care manager is to be able to integrate those things together to make it possible? So the difference between planning is the shopping list and having a checkbook. The preparation is actually having everything ready at the time of need, long before you need it. in retirement, Joe, and I think you've written recently about this topic about how to pivot when your retirement doesn't go as planned as as you've prepared for it. What, what do folks need to do? I mean, I look at retirement and I thinkUm, it's sort of like flying a plane, right? You just don't go from one point to another without making adjustments along the way. So whether it's an adjustment because of something that happened that was unplanned or something that happened that, uh, you just need to make adjustments for, but it's the unplanned things, the unexpected things that people really needed to prepare themselves for, right? Like yesterday won't be the same as tomorrow, uh, per se, right?Or tomorrow won't be the same as yesterday. You know, what's really funny, Bob, is if you think about the whole area of people that are entering it soon or already in there are frankly uh uh on a new frontier of retirement. Our parents, our grandparents, uh, not only had different financial strategies either uh because they, you know, they had uh defined benefits or or the like, frankly, they didn't live as long either. So this next generation is going to be living a much longer period with shall we say, relatively more uncertainty in that time that they're living, they're gonna have many different changes. We have, we have, uh, marketed a falsehood that retirement is somewhere between cruises and crutches. But in between, there's going to be so much more. There will be health events, there will be births of grandchildren. They'll be the desire and the demand to have to move. I would suggest that there will be more changes than all the previous life stages before challenge will be is that you may not be physically, emotionally, or maybe even cognitively uh is capable to, shall we say, be able to manage and pivot in those moments. So part of being prepared for retirement is having lots of plan B's and plan C's, which will also include having conversations with your partner, your spouse, your family, so they have a general idea of what, what is it that you would like or be on the, shall we say on standby for when you want to make the moves that you need to do. Yeah, you and I have talked a lot in the past about livable communities, about the age-friendly, uh, sort of, uh, uh, notion of having the eight domains all in place, whether it's housing or economic security or uh or uh community etc. Tell us, should people think about moving to communities that are quote unquote livable versus not so livable? Absolutely they they shouldn't, you know, the, the home is very important, but like the real estate mantra it says, it's about location, location, livable communities basically is not just is it have transportation alternatives, access to health care, cultural amenities, and the like, is it a place that will support you as you age? And there are tools out there. Yes, there's the designations of livable communities, but AARP also has a great website where you can punch in a zip code and it will give you scores out of fronts as to how livable or how age friendly a community might be. At the end of the day, it's up to you if you uh and your partner or if you're living solo to weigh which of those variables you think are the most important and how you'll be able to manage for transportation, housing, access to work. Frankly, don't ever forget the F word, access to fund matters. And access to a Dairy Queen with soft serve perhaps as well, huh? Got it. All right, Joe, uh, we've run out of time. We can't thank you enough for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us. It's greatly appreciated. We'll have you back on a future episode for sure. Great. Thanks so much, Bob. Great being here. So that wraps up this episode of Decoding Retirement. We hope we provided you with some actionable advice to plan for or live better in don't forget, if you've got questions about retirement, you can email me at yfpodcast@yahoo and we'll do our best to answer your question in a future episode. And lastly, remember you can listen to Decoding Retirement on all your favorite podcast platforms. This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services. 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CBS News
33 minutes ago
- CBS News
A cancer diagnosis can cause out-of-pocket costs to surge, even for those with insurance
A cancer diagnosis increases privately insured patients' monthly out-of-pocket costs, which also rise as the disease progresses, new research shows. Out-of-pocket costs jumped by $592.53 per month for the six months after a diagnosis, according to a recent report published in JAMA Open Network. The study underscores the financial toll a cancer diagnosis can take on individuals, even for those who are insured but don't yet qualify for Medicare. While cancer tends to strike later in life, when most patients in treatment are receiving Medicare benefits, a cancer diagnosis can pose an undue financial burden on younger people with private insurance, the report found. Those out-of-pocket costs highlight the need for policy reform, the report said. The research "underscores the need for policies such as paid sick leave that address both insurance continuity and financial assistance, especially for patients with more advanced cancer," the report states. Out-of-pocket costs increased based on a patient's cancer progression, the analysis found. Patients with stage 0 cancer saw their costs rise by $462 per month compared to non-cancer patients, while stage 4 cancer cost people with private insurance an additional $719.97 per month in out of pocket costs. Costs rise as the disease progresses because patients typically require more treatment during cancer's later stages, leading to greater medical expenditures. "This result seems straightforward; later-stage disease is associated with more intensive workup and treatment that can drive higher medical expenditures," the report states. Researchers analyzed medical claims records from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry to compare the out-of-pocket costs of privately insured individuals under the age of 65 who were diagnosed with breast, colorectal, and lung cancer, to those without cancer. New research from the American Cancer Society shows that as more people aged 45-49 undergo screening for colon cancer, more early stage diagnoses are being made.
