Commercial real estate practitioners contacted by CoStar News expressed skepticism over announcements from the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury in the past week over their plans to purchase or subsidize up to $2 trillion in mortgage-related investments. 

CoStar Group’s Watch List Newsletter queried about 500 commercial industry executives on their initial reactions to the two plans to remove bad (toxic) or frozen loans from lenders’ and investors’ books in order to free up capital for them in order to lend more. (Source: CoStar Group)

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The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommended to Congress Tuesday that skilled nursing and rehabilitation facilities not receive a reimbursement rate increase for fiscal year 2010. The recommendation angered nursing home providers.  (Source: McKnight’s Long-Term Care)

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In a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there’s a suit of clothing that can make anyone feel ready for Social Security. It’s called the Age Gain Now Empathy System, or AGNES, a navy-blue jumpsuit laced with braces and elastic bands and topped with a white MIT hard hat.

Exercise physiologist Rozanne Puleo helped a team of mechanical engineers develop AGNES. The goal: To teach engineers in their 20s and 30s how to design products that are easy for people in their 70s to use. (Source: The Boston Globe)

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Nursing home Medicaid reimbursement systems can work to improve quality of care—but they have to be used the right way, a new report suggests.

The Long-Term Care Community Coalition (LTCCC) conducted a one-year study of 35 states that use a case-mix Medicaid reimbursement system—a system that reimburses nursing homes based both on quality performance and facility costs. The system has a few built-in disincentives for quality improvement, the study finds. (Source: McKnight’s Long-Term Care)

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By Mary Brophy Marcus, USA TODAY

The number of people who have Alzheimer’s disease is creeping insidiously higher year after year, adding increasing pressure on the health care system, experts say. A report out today, the 2009 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures, indicates that an estimated 5.1 million Americans over 65 now have Alzheimer’s. (Source: USA Today)

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In just two short years, the first wave of baby boomers will begin to turn age 65 - the age of greatest risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. There are an estimated 5.2 million Americans living with this fatal, degenerative disease that today has no cure. With an aging baby boomer population, as many as 16 million people may have the disease by 2050. As the prevalence of Alzheimer’s increases, so does the need for qualified nurses. We applaud the creation of the Champion Nursing Coalition, a broad spectrum of stakeholders who have come together to shed light on the grave threat the nursing shortage poses to the nation and the health care system. (Source: Medical News Today)

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One snowy New Year’s Eve, in a cabin by Lake George in upstate New York, Dan Reingold, the 54-year-old C.E.O. of the Hebrew Home for Aged in Riverdale, shared a bottle of single-malt Scotch with a group of friends and asked them to imagine a nursing home that wouldn’t make baby boomers like themselves say, “Over my dead body.” (Source: New York Times Online)

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