Joe Manchin

As our senator, we need your continued help and support.

When Senator Manchin was our governor the Lighthouse program was developed.

By devoting our time and resources to the areas of preventing financial abuse and ensuring a robust long-term care ombudsman program, I believe we can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our aging network.

Thank you, Senator Manchin and Congresswoman Capito, for the opportunity to testify here today.

Thank you so much, Ron.

I want to thank you for your testimony.

I would like to have one more, and then I'm going to turn to the Congresswoman.

I know how true that is. And you know how hard it is to cook for one person.

That was the whole purpose, and it has I think worked extremely well and been extremely successful.

The family members were trying. They wear out and they give up, and they say I can't do it any longer.

Our purpose for that was to reduce our cost but to give quality care and to have people have respect and dignity.

Brenda, if you will, I know we talked about the consolidation of programs and things of this sort.

Do you all have any conferences with--I think we have a tremendous network of pharmacists that do a wonderful job.

First of all, it's an epidemic in this nation, not just in West Virginia, not just in your county, or not someone in your family, because I don't think there's a person in this room right now, and I'm one of those people, that doesn't know…

I guess, Suzanne, what I'm asking, do you see a lack?

In nutritional services, Florida receives 10 times more dollars than we do but only serves four times more meals than we do, and that just seems inherently unfair.

We're going to have to make the hard realization that everybody can work better and more efficiently.

But in Washington, knowing that we're going to be facing some--every agency is going to be asked--every agency is going to say, yes, but we're much more important, so we want you to protect us; if anything, increase our funding.

Certainly with the budget crisis that we're facing in Washington, we've been blessed in West Virginia and we have our house in pretty good order, if you will, and they're working on making it even better, but the challenges are still there.

We'll be the first generation to turn over the keys to our children in worse shape than our parents gave it to us.

The deficit and debt of this nation is the greatest security risk we have as a nation.

That person still deserves that love and care no matter whether they have a family or not that can do it, and not everybody can do it.

I think that's what I'm trying to find out, because I know other people aren't as blessed as I am to have the family support that we have.

I want to make sure that as we grow older, we know exactly that we can go one place and find out everything that we have available to us.

Now more than ever, we need to be ready to help seniors stay healthy and independent as they age.