NEWS
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
A11
Hillock Insurance offers help in Medicare plan enrollments
Bill Bradshaw
Wallowa County Chieftain
Social Security. Medi-
care. Part A. Part B and the
rest of the senior health care
alphabet soup. Choosing
the right coverage can be
daunting.
That’s what Kathleen
Bennett is here to help with.
The insurance agent held an
open house Wednesday, Oct.
23, at Hillock Insurance at
616 W. North St. in Enter-
prise to help people under-
stand and be able to enroll
in Medicare and related
programs.
“I know this can be very
complicated and confus-
ing, so come see me if you
are thinking of enrolling in
a Medicare plan,” she said.
“There’s no cost to answer
questions.” Bennett said she
also can help people already
enrolled in Medicare and its
supplements change plans or
sign up for something new.
There are three main
things that people near-
ing eligibility for Medicare
should know, Bennett said.
The fi rst is that that they
have a seven-month window
surrounding their 65th birth-
day—three months before
their birth month, their birth
month, and three months
after their birth month —
in which to enroll in Medi-
care Parts A and B. So if you
were born on, say, Septem-
ber 10, you would have all
of September, all of the three
months before your birth-
day (June, July, and August)
Bill Bradshaw
Kathleen Bennett, Medicare agent at Hillock Insurance in Enterprise, looks over some information she uses to advise Medicare-
eligible customers Thursday, Oct. 24, at her offi ce on West North Street.
plus all of the three months
after your birthday (October,
November, and December)
to enroll in Medicare’s basic
programs, A and B. Part A
covers 80 percent of hospital-
ization. B covers 80 percent
of physician, outpatient care,
and other, related expenses.
Second, it’s important to
understand the difference
between Medicare A and B
and the additional plans of
Medicare Advantage (Part
C), Medicare supplement
plans, and Part D, which
covers prescription drugs.
And third, it’s important
to choose the best plan for
your individual situation.
The deadline for enroll-
ment in Parts C, Supple-
mentary plans, and part D is
December 7.
Medicare Advantage, aka
Medicare C, is a program
administered by Moda—a
health-care insurance com-
pany that started out as
the Oregon Dental Ser-
vice (ODS) in 1955. Today
they are eastern Oregon’s
only provider of Medi-
care Advantage. Medicare
Advantage is relatively new.
It is an “all in one” alterna-
tive to Original Medicare. If
you join a Medicare Advan-
tage Plan, you still have
Medicare. These “bundled”
plans include Medicare Part
A (Hospital Insurance) and
Medicare Part B (Medi-
cal Insurance), and usually
Medicare prescription drug
(Part D).
If Medicare Advantage
through Moda doesn’t work
for you, there are supple-
ment Plans F, G, K and N,
also known as “Medigap
insurance” These plans are
defi ned by Medicare. They
are offered by many private
health insurance providers,
including Blue Cross, Farm-
ers, United Health Care and
others. Because Medicare
defi nes the coverage, any
“Plan G” policy, for exam-
ple, provides the same cov-
erage as any other “Plan G
policy” regardless of the
company you purchase the
plan from. To enroll in Medi-
gap coverage, you must be
enrolled in Medicare parts
A and B. But, importantly,
these supplemental plans
do not provide coverage for
prescription drugs.
If you choose Medigap
coverage (above), you may
also wish to have prescrip-
tion drug coverage. This is
provided by Medicare Plan
D, which has several stan-
dard options defi ned by
Medicare. Like the Medi-
gap coverage, it is pur-
chased from private insur-
ance companies.
There are many differ-
ent options for medical
insurance to supplement
the basic Medicare parts A
and B. “It’s helpful to have
someone guide you through
those choices. It’s not a one-
size fi ts-all,” Bennett said.
“I’m here to help Wallowa
County residents make the
best choices for their indi-
vidual situations.”
To learn more, visit medi-
care.gov, socialsecurity.gov
or contact Kathleen Bennett
at 616 W. North St. in Enter-
prise, 541-426-4208 or kath-
leen@hillockins.com.
BLUE LIGHT IS BAD FOR YOU
Research shows wavelengths produced by LEDs damage brains cells
Steve Lundeberg
Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. –
Prolonged exposure to blue
light, such as that which
emanates from your phone,
computer and household
fi xtures, could be affecting
your longevity, even if it’s
not shining in your eyes.
New research at Oregon
State University suggests
that the blue wavelengths
produced by light-emitting
diodes damage cells in the
brain as well as retinas.
The study, published
today in Aging and Mecha-
nisms of Disease, involved a
widely used organism, Dro-
sophila melanogaster, the
common fruit fl y, an import-
ant model organism because
of the cellular and develop-
mental mechanisms it shares
with other animals and
humans.
Jaga Giebultowicz, a
researcher in the OSU Col-
lege of Science who stud-
ies biological clocks, led
a research collaboration
that examined how fl ies
responded to daily 12-hour
exposures to blue LED light
– similar to the prevalent
blue wavelength in devices
like phones and tablets – and
found that the light acceler-
ated aging.
Flies subjected to daily
cycles of 12 hours in light
and 12 hours in darkness
had shorter lives compared
OregonState University
Exposure to blue light can damage brain cells as well as your
eyes.
to fl ies kept in total darkness
or those kept in light with
the blue wavelengths fi ltered
out. The fl ies exposed to
blue light showed damage to
their retinal cells and brain
neurons and had impaired
locomotion – the fl ies’ abil-
ity to climb the walls of
their enclosures, a common
behavior, was diminished.
Some of the fl ies in the
experiment were mutants
that do not develop eyes,
and even those eyeless fl ies
displayed brain damage and
locomotion
impairments,
suggesting fl ies didn’t have
to see the light to be harmed
by it.
“The fact that the light
was accelerating aging in
the fl ies was very surprising
to us at fi rst,” said Giebul-
towicz, a professor of inte-
grative biology. “We’d mea-
sured expression of some
genes in old fl ies, and found
that stress-response, protec-
tive genes were expressed if
fl ies were kept in light. We
hypothesized that light was
regulating those genes. Then
we started asking, what is it
in the light that is harmful to
them, and we looked at the
spectrum of light. It was very
clear cut that although light
without blue slightly short-
ened their lifespan, just blue
light alone shortened their
lifespan very dramatically.”
Natural light, Giebulto-
wicz notes, is crucial for the
body’s circadian rhythm –
the 24-hour cycle of phys-
iological processes such as
brain wave activity, hor-
mone production and cell
regeneration that are import-
ant factors in feeding and
sleeping patterns.
“But there is evidence
suggesting that increased
exposure to artifi cial light is
a risk factor for sleep and cir-
cadian disorders,” she said.
“And with the prevalent use
of LED lighting and device
displays, humans are sub-
jected to increasing amounts
of light in the blue spectrum
since commonly used LEDs
emit a high fraction of blue
light. But this technology,
LED lighting, even in most
developed countries, has not
been used long enough to
know its effects across the
human lifespan.”
Giebultowicz says that
the fl ies, if given a choice,
avoid blue light.
“We’re going to test if the
same signaling that causes
them to escape blue light is
involved in longevity,” she
said.
Eileen Chow, faculty
research assistant in Giebul-
towicz’s lab and co-fi rst
author of the study, notes
that advances in technology
and medicine could work
together to address the dam-
aging effects of light if this
research eventually proves
applicable to humans.
“Human lifespan has
increased dramatically over
the past century as we’ve
found ways to treat diseases,
and at the same time we
have been spending more
and more time with artifi cial
light,” she said. “As science
looks for ways to help peo-
ple be healthier as they live
longer, designing a health-
ier spectrum of light might
be a possibility, not just in
terms of sleeping better but
in terms of overall health.”
In the meantime, there are
a few things people can do
to help themselves that don’t
involve sitting for hours in
darkness, the researchers
say. Eyeglasses with amber
PET OF
K
THE WEE
lenses will fi lter out the blue
light and protect your ret-
inas. And phones, laptops
and other devices can be set
to block blue emissions.
“In the future, there may
be phones that auto-adjust
their display based on the
length of usage the phone
perceives,” said lead author
Trevor Nash, a 2019 OSU
Honors College graduate
who was a fi rst-year under-
graduate when the research
began. “That kind of phone
might be diffi cult to make,
but it would probably have a
big impact on health.”
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