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The Northeast Kansas Area Agency on Aging assists individuals in living independently in their homes and communities, maintaining their independence, quality of life and dignity, for as long as possible.

Winter 2018 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434 785-742-7152

By Ginger Skinner A Consumer Reports (CR) pricing investigation has found that when it comes to prescription drugs, it really pays to shop around, even in the same ZIP code. CR’s secret shoppers called more than 150 pharmacies in six met-ropolitan regions around the country from midsummer through early fall, seeking quotes for their discounted retail or “cash” price for a one-month supply of five commonly prescribed drugs. The list included the generic versions of Actos, for diabetes; Celebrex, for pain; Cymbalta, for depres-sion; Lipitor, for high cholesterol; and Plavix, a blood thinner. The range of discounted retail prices CR found at those stores—representing several dozen national retailers, grocery stores, and inde-pendent pharmacies—was stunning. While the lowest-priced retailer rang up to just under $100 for the five-drug “market basket,” the two highest-priced national retailers—CVS and Kmart—registered total pric-es closer to $1,000. How to Shop Around and Save CR’s secret shoppers not only identified which pharmacies tend to have the lowest prices but also uncovered several other surprising and effective strategies to lower drug costs. Ask for the “lowest possible price.” This would be the lowest price the pharmacy can offer without going through your insurance, and it could be less than your co-pay. By taking the initiative and asking that question, it may allow the pharmacist to bypass the gag clause that might otherwise prevent such pricing transparency. Just remember that when you don’t use your insurance, the money you spend is unlikely to count toward your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum. Check out buying clubs such as Costco and Sam’s Club. You don’t have to be a member to get the prices our secret shoppers found. But if

To Get the Lowest Drug Prices It Pays to Shop Around

Inside

LIEAP Begins

Forgetfullness

VolunteersNeeded

PineapplePork Chops

See Drugs, page 3

Northeast Kansas Area Agency on Aging1803 Oregon StreetHiawatha, KS 66434-2256

This newsletter is published quarterly by the Northeast Kansas Area Agency on Aging. It is funded by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services through the Older Americans’ Act. We assume no responsibility for the care and return of unsolicited material. Donated

articles are suggested.

The Northeast Kansas Area Agency on Aging does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, national origin, sex, or handicap.

Over nine in 10 course participants report changing at least one key driving behavior for the better as a result of what they learned in the course and over eight in ten participants felt that information they

learned in the course has prevented them from being in a crash. After completing the course, you’ll receive a certificate of completion that should be presented to your

insurance agent for a reduction in your auto insurance premiums.AARP membership is not required to take the course.

The classroom course costs only $15 for AARP members and $20 for nonmembers.Classes run from 8 am to 12 Noon at our offices in Hiawatha.

January 31February 21

March 21April 25

Call 800-883-2549 to register for a class.

This newsletter belongs to you!NEKAAA hopes that receiving this newsletter quarterly makes a difference in your life. While the newsletter is mailed free of charge, we depend on your donations to cover a part of our operating expenses. A contribution from you will help us in our continuing mission to enhance the quality of life for our readers. We appreciate your support.

IRS 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation—your donation is tax deductible.

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Please send to: NEKAAA, 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434

Winter 2018 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434 785-742-7152

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The Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP) is a Federally funded program that helps eligible households pay a portion of their home en-ergy costs by providing a one-time per year benefit. The 2018 LIEAP application period will open on Tuesday, January 16, 2018 and remain open until March 30, 2018. Eligibility In order to qualify, applicants must meet the following requirements: 1. An adult living at the address must be personally responsible for paying the heating costs incurred at the current residence, payable either to the landlord or the fuel vendor. 2. Applicants must demonstrate a recent history of payments toward purchase of the pri-mary heating energy. The combined gross income (before deduc-tions) of all persons living at the address may not exceed 130% of the federal poverty level accord-ing to the guidelines listed below:

2018 Income Eligibility Guidelines(Oct. 1, 2017 through Sept. 30, 2018)

Household size Gross monthly income

1 $1,307

2 $1,760

3 $2,213

4 $2,6665 $3,1196 $3,5727 $4,0258 $4,478

Each additional member +$453

Our office will provide assistance with filling out your form. Call us at 785-742-7152

LIEAP Begins January

By Jon Hamilton Older brains may forget more because they lose their rhythm at night. During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team re-ports in the journal, Neuron. “It’s like a drummer that’s perhaps just one beat off the rhythm,” says Matt Walker, one of the paper’s authors and a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. “The aging brain just doesn’t seem to be able to synchronize its brain waves effectively.” The finding appears to answer a long-stand-ing question about how aging can affect memory even in people who do not have Alzheimer’s or some other brain disease. To confirm the finding, though, research-ers will have to show that it’s possible to cause memory problems in a young brain by disrupting these rhythms, Seibt says. The study was the result of an effort to understand how the sleeping brain turns short-term memories into memories that can last a life-time, says Walker, the author of the book, Why We Sleep. “What is it about sleep that seems to perform this elegant trick of cementing new facts into the neural architecture of the brain?” To find out, Walker and a team of scientists had 20 young adults learn 120 pairs of words. “Then we put electrodes on their head and we had them sleep,” he says. The electrodes let researchers monitor the electrical waves produced by the brain during deep sleep. They focused on the interaction be-tween slow waves, which occur every second or so, and faster waves called sleep spindles, which occur more than 12 times a second. The next morning the volunteers took a test to see how many word pairs they could still

Older Adults’ Forgetfulness Tied To Faulty Brain Rhythms In Sleep

remember. And it turned out their performance was determined by how well their slow waves and spindles had synchronized during deep sleep. “When those two brain waves were per-fectly coinciding, that’s when you seem to get this fantastic transfer of memory within the brain from short term vulnerable storage sites to these more permanent, safe, long-term storage sites,” Walker says. Next, the team repeated the experiment with 32 people in their 60s and 70s. Their brain waves were less synchronized during deep sleep. They also remembered fewer word pairs the next morning. And, just like with young people, perfor-mance on the memory test was determined by how well their brain waves kept the beat, says Randolph Helfrich, an author of the new study and a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. “If you’re like 50 milliseconds too early, 50 milliseconds too late, then the storing mecha-nism actually doesn’t work.” Helfrich says.The team also found a likely reason for the lack

of coordination associated with aging: atrophy of an area of the brain involved in producing deep sleep. People with more atrophy had less rhythm in the brain, Walker says. That’s discouraging because atrophy in this area of the brain is a normal consequence of aging, Walker says, and can be much worse in people with Alzheimer’s. But the study also suggests that it’s possible to improve an impaired memory by re-synchronizing brain rhythms during sleep. One way to do this would be by applying elec-trical or magnetic pulses through the scalp. “The idea is to boost those brain waves and bring them back to-gether,” Helfrich says. Walker already has plans to test this approach to synchronizing brain waves. “What we’re going to try and do is act like a metronome and in doing so see if we can actually sal-vage aspects of learning and memory in older adults and those with dementia,” he says.

See Forget, page 7

Forget, from page 2

peting costs, and some even offer a coupon for each store, so you can compare prices—saving you time. Even better, these services are free.Investigate independents. Locally owned phar-macies offered some of the lowest prices our shoppers found—but also some of the highest. You won’t know for certain until you call to find out. Case in point: The price of a 30-day supply of pioglitazone (generic Actos) at the independents we called ranged from $10 to $493. Don’t dismiss supermarket pharma-cies. As with independent pharmacies, some supermarket drugstores offered really compet-itive prices—but others had very high ones. So do see what your local grocery store pharmacy would charge, but check other nearby pharma-cies, too. Onceyoufindapharmacy,stickwithit. Shop around, and once you settle on a phar-macy that’s consistently offering the best deal on medication, fill all your prescriptions at that retailer. Why? Because buying all your medi-cation from the same drugstore makes it easier for pharmacists to spot potentially dangerous drug interactions and other safety concerns, says Consumer Reports’ Avitzur. But if you notice your drug costs starting to go up notice-ably, it may be time to comparison shop again.

Winter 2018 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434 785-742-7152 Winter 2018 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434 785-742-7152

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Drugs, from page 1

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Want to help us save money?

Get our newsletter via email:email us at: info@ nekaaa.org

1-800-883-2549

The Volunteer Income Tax Assis-tance Program (VITA) is an IRS-spon-sored program that offers free tax help to anyone making $54,000 or less, including the elderly, the disabled and those hav-ing limited English proficiency. Volun-teers assisting with the VITA Program just want to help in their communities. Certified volunteers, sponsored by the Northeast Kansas Area Agency on Ag-ing, receive free training to help prepare tax returns in Brown and other counties. Online training is available through Link & Learn Taxes and Understanding Taxes. These online courses are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via IRS.gov, and allow volunteers to take courses and obtain certification at their own pace. Contact Kevin at NEKAAA (785-742-7152) for how to begin volunteering.

Tax Volunteers Neededyou do pay the fees to join—$60 at Costco and $100 at Sam’s Club—your drug costs could be even lower. A Sam’s Club in Dal-las told our shopper that with a Sam’s Club Plus Membership, generic Actos would be free, generic Plavix and Lipitor would cost $10, and there can be extra savings for generic versions of many drugs. Consider the online pharmacy HealthWarehouse.com. It had the lowest prices for our market basket of meds. If you try other websites, look for those that operate in the U.S. and end in “.pharma-cy” or that carry the VIPPS (Verified Inter-net Pharmacy Practice Site) symbol. That indicates that an online pharmacy meets strict standards set by the National Asso-ciation of Boards of Pharmacy. (Note that the VIPPS program is being phased out in favor of requiring verified pharmacies to include the .pharmacy domain name.) Ask for in-store discounts. Many pharmacy chains—including CVS and Rite Aid—that had high list prices in our price check say that they provide access to discounted drugs to in-store customers. For example, Rite Aid offers hundreds of generic drugs for as low as $10 for a 30-day supply and $16 for 90 days. But some of these discount programs can’t be used in conjunction with other insurance, in-cluding Medicare. Search for coupons online. Phar-macists sometimes told our shoppers that they would be better off getting coupons from online services such as Blink Health and GoodRx. These sites aggregate com-

There are many situations during which your driving visibility will be challenged or com-promised, such as driving in the snow, sleet, ice and hail. Each storm is different and road condi-tions will change, making it difficult to drive in these conditions. The rule of thumb is to adjust your speed to match the current driving con-ditions and increase your following distance. Bridges freeze before roads. This occurs because a bridge is in con-tact with freezing air from all sides. A road is in contact only with the air above it. Be cautious — you never know if there is a sheet of ice underneath the snow. Drive in the tire tracks of other vehicles as there will be more traction in these areas. Be careful when changing lanes. The area between lanes may have a build-up of crunchy ice, which should be avoid-ed. If you must change lanes, do so gradual-ly while holding the steering wheel firmly. All snow is different, so testing is neces-sary. When you first get on the road, test your brakes to gauge how they react to the conditions. Beware of “black ice.” It is ice that forms with almost no air bub-bles, which makes the ice transparent and appears the same color as the road surface. On asphalt or dark-colored roads, this ice appears black. Black ice is extremely dangerous because it is so difficult to see. The only way you will know if you have hit a patch of black ice is that you will start sliding. Take your foot off the gas ped-al and do not step on the brake; continue driving straight. Hopefully, the patch will end soon and you will be back in control on the road again.Stay in the right lane. There is no need to drive quickly in snowy or icy conditions. Caution: If at all possible, do not drive under these conditions.

Managing Challenging Road Conditions

Winter 2018 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434 785-742-7152 Winter 2018 1803 Oregon, Hiawatha, KS 66434 785-742-7152

Five Ingredient Pineapple Pork ChopsIngredients:• 4 pork chops• ½ cup soy sauce (low sodium)•½teaspoonredpepperflakes(ormoreifyoulikealotofheat)• 1 can sliced pineapple, drained and cut into large pieces• 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped

Directions1. Marinateporkinsoysauceandredpepperflakesfor½anhour, or up to 2 days.2. Pouroffmarinadeandgrillorcookporkinlargenonstickskillet. It has to be a nonstick skillet or else you need cooking spray.3. Cookonhighfor4minutes,thenflipandcookfor3minutes,thenaddinpineapplepieces and remove from heat. Let sit for 5 min, then sprinkle cilantro over the pork and pineapple, slice pork and enjoy.

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One More Reason for a Hearing Test Untreated hearing loss could cause interpersonal problems, says a review of 78 studies. Researchers found that family members report arguments about problems such as TV and radio volume, and that they feel stressed, worn out, and guilty if they let frustration show. Source: Trends in Hearing, Oct. 5, 2017.

BenefitsofaBigBreakfast?In a Spanish study, people who ate small break fasts or skipped them entirely, ap-peared to be at higher risk for artery-clogging blood vessel plaque than those who had substantial morn ing meals. Plaque risk was 40 to 50 percent higher for those who ate lightly (mostly coffee and toast or pastries) and even higher in those who ate nothing. Big breakfasts included pro duce, healthy fats, cereal, and protein. This study can’t prove cause and effect, but it mir rors earlier research that found skipping or skimping on breakfast could lead to unhealthy food choices and more calories later in the day, extra abdominal fat, and higher levels of inflammation and blood sugar, researchers say. Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Oct. 2, 2017.