Kentucky is home to more than 81,000 seniors living with Alzheimer’s disease. Many of them, and their caregivers, rely on programs that do more than just cover hospital bills. Medicare Advantage is one such program.
People with Alzheimer’s need coordinated and consistent care. They often face challenges accessing specialists, managing medications, getting to appointments, and staying safe in their homes. For rural seniors especially, distances, travel, and mobility present real obstacles.
Medicare Advantage helps overcome those barriers to care through services such as in-home health assessments and transportation to medical appointments.
In Kentucky, Alzheimer’s is a family issue as much as it is a public health one. Over 160,000 caregivers provide millions of hours of unpaid care for people navigating cognitive decline. These folks often juggle their employment, their own health, and their personal finances to support loved ones with Alzheimer’s. It’s a hard and thankless job, but critical to the health of their loved ones.
The supplemental benefits and focus on preventive care in Medicare Advantage help reduce the strain families and caregivers face and stop crises before they happen. Programs that catch early problems, like medication side effects or safety hazards, help keep Alzheimer’s patients out of the hospital.
That’s why a new bill in Congress, the No UPCODE Act, is of concern. The bill would limit access to some of those supplemental services, including critical home visits. It could also raise costs or force seniors to give up benefits they depend on.
Accountability and oversight matter, but this proposal targets a program that is already held to rigorous standards.
Independent experts back this up. The Congressional Budget Office warned that proposals like the No UPCODE Act could lead to higher premiums and greater cost sharing. For patients managing Alzheimer’s or other chronic illnesses, losing those benefits would be devastating. It would also shift more costs onto families who are already stretched thin.
The concern isn’t limited to Alzheimer’s patients. More than 34 million seniors and patients with disabilities nationwide count on Medicare Advantage to provide the kind of preventive care and coordinated support that traditional Medicare doesn’t cover. Cutting back on those benefits would make it harder for older adults to stay independent and, in the end, drive up costs for taxpayers as more people turn to hospitals and nursing homes for care that could have been prevented.
In Kentucky’s rural areas, health providers are already overburdened and under-resourced. Losing the benefits that support preventive care and ease access would worsen gaps, forcing more people into costlier sites of care. Seniors with Alzheimer’s may skip rides to specialists, lose critical therapies, or stop seeing doctors early when symptom changes matter most.
Medicare Advantage is built to coordinate, prevent, and sustain health and independence, not just reactively respond to crises. In a state like ours where Alzheimer’s is rising, weakening that support is playing with fire.
We call on Kentucky’s congressional delegation to protect Medicare Advantage so it can continue offering supplemental care, support for caregivers, and coordinated services that improve the lives of seniors living with this devastating disease. Alzheimer’s doesn’t wait. Neither should our response.
The Alzheimer’s Association of Kentucky