Nov 25, 2024 | Advocacy, Federal Government
Right now, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is soliciting public comments on the use and conversation of Social Security benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments for foster children, including those who are orphaned. Your comments are important, and you can take action by re-submitting Evermore’s formal comments to the SSA, which recommends the federal agency focus on three priorities:
1) Address under-enrollment in both Social Security benefits and SSI, as only half of children receive the benefit,
2) Prioritize child survivorship programs and benefits as an SSA top priority and
3) Enhance state support by offering technical assistance, educational offerings, and related services to upskill community organizations, agency staff, and other key leaders in children’s lives on the importance of Social Security benefits and SSI.
According to experts, more than half of orphans in the United States (children who have experienced the death of one or both parents before their 18th birthday) are not receiving the Social Security benefits that they are eligible to receive. These benefits are often a result of hard-earned taxpayer dollars by a child/ren’s parents, who anticipated these benefits would be conferred to their child/ren upon death. If current trends hold true, then upwards to $15,000,000,000 is not being conferred to orphaned children annually.
Evermore believes it is incumbent that SSA prioritizes orphanhood benefits, find these children, and confer the benefits that are rightfully theirs, thus offering them a future as healthy and prosperous as their non-bereaved counterparts. Indeed, it is our moral obligation to do so.
By following the link below, you may re-submit Evermore’s comments and include your own story or rationale as to why this is an important concern. Every comment matters. Please submit your comments today. SSA will stop accepting comments on Monday, December 2, 2024.
Resources:
Read the federal solicitation here: Request for Information: Use and Conservation of Social Security Benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Payments That Representative Payees Receive for Beneficiaries Residing in Foster Care
Nov 12, 2024 | Advocacy, Appropriations, Federal Government, Grief
With Evermore’s support and encouragement, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, directing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to produce a report on the need for bereavement and grief services in the United States. Last week, just prior to the national election, the report was released to the public. To our knowledge, it is the first report by the U.S. and a direct result of Evermore’s leadership.
The report examined the scope of need for quality grief services, assessed the demand for such services, and provided a holistic evaluation of affected populations. This included identifying necessary interventions for specific groups, such as healthcare workers and other impacted demographics, and assessing the prevalence of conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complicated grief (CG). Additionally, the role of hospice programs in offering community bereavement support was underscored as essential to addressing these growing needs.
Findings from an environmental scan and interviews with experts, including researchers, advocates, and clinicians, reveal that grief responses are complex and vary widely. Approximately 10% of bereaved adults develop prolonged grief disorder (PGD) or CG, though contributors suggest these figures might be underestimated due to diagnostic complexities and overlapping mental health issues. PGD frequently co-occurs with PTSD, depression, and substance use disorder, posing challenges for treatment. Children, caregivers, veterans, and individuals who experience traumatic loss are among those most affected by PGD. Effective support services span from traditional therapy to music therapy, emphasizing trauma-informed care, while schools and mental health settings serve as critical sites for identifying those in need.
The report highlights hospice as a crucial service in promoting healthy bereavement by offering anticipatory support and post-loss coping mechanisms. However, concerns about access inequities and the shift toward for-profit hospice models were noted. Systemic factors like race and socioeconomic status also influence access to bereavement services, with disparities particularly prominent for communities of color. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has increased awareness around grief and reduced stigma, it has also amplified service demands, especially in underserved communities. Many contributors support a more comprehensive approach to grief that goes beyond medicalization, advocating for a nuanced understanding of grief’s social and cultural dimensions.
The report suggests that current bereavement services are fragmented and inequitable, with a need for a more comprehensive, less medicalized approach to grief support. Recommendations include enhancing healthcare systems, improving access to services, and addressing the inequities in bereavement support.
Resources:
Read the full Report to Congress: An Overview of Bereavement and Grief Services in the United States here.
Jun 19, 2024 | Advocacy, Federal Government
Got Questions? National Call to Discuss the U.S. Government’s First Report on Grief & Bereavement
We’re Here to Answer Your Questions:
Join Us!
]In May, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a little-known government agency, released its draft report, “Interventions to Improve Care of Bereaved People.” This is the U.S. government’s first report on grief and bereavement, and AHRQ is accepting public comments until Friday, June 28, 2024.
- You can submit your comments via this link.
- Additional context for the report can be found here.
If you have questions, consider joining Evermore’s national call this Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.
Reviewers found that “important gaps in our knowledge of various aspects of bereavement care” remain. This report is a first step toward advancing bereavement care for all bereaved people, but a lot more work needs to be done.
Your voice, questions, and concerns are important. Please consider submitting them today.
Apr 17, 2024 | Advocacy, Federal Government
When someone close to us dies, we’re hardly in the right frame of mind to handle logistics and practical matters. Yet, often, this is the first thing we’re forced to confront.
There’s the matter of the deceased’s body and how it will be handled, but also funeral arrangements and ceremonial planning to honor the life of the person we’re grieving.
Funeral planning requires people to make multiple decisions while experiencing difficult and intense emotions. Making matters even more challenging, funeral arrangements are financially taxing.
In America, the funeral industry is essentially unavoidable after someone close to us dies. Because the funeral industry is ubiquitous and homogenous — offering the same services, same processes and procedures for after-death care — we rarely question it. But there’s a lot about the funeral industry you may not know.
Here are five facts about the funeral industry that will probably surprise you:
1. The funeral industry pulls in big dollars.
In the U.S., funeral homes are a $20 billion dollar annual industry. Most funeral homes are privately owned, and increasingly, more funeral homes are owned by large corporations.
Service Corporation International, the largest death-care corporation in the country, owns and operates more than 1,400 locations in North America and brought in more than $4 billion in revenue in 2023.
“Families are hurting. They are not only losing someone meaningful in their lives, their losses are compounded by the soaring costs in burials and cremations,” says Evermore founder Joyal Mulheron. “The funeral industry is well-funded, made only more profitable by our nation’s concurrent mortality epidemics — just look at their revenue statements.”
According to Statista, there are nearly 19,000 funeral homes in the U.S., yet there remains a surprising lack of competition in the industry. In the past several decades, larger funeral service companies, and in some cases, private equity firms, have bought up smaller, family-run businesses that were well-known and trusted in their communities.
The result has been a growing monopoly on the industry by fewer wealthy — and powerful — businesses. The industry’s consolidation was the central storyline for the 2023 hit The Burial, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx and directed by Maggie Betts.
2. The funeral industry is poorly regulated.
The funeral industry is primarily regulated by the Funeral Rule. Introduced in 1984 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Funeral Rule was established to prevent vulnerable families from being exploited by licensed funeral homes after the FTC found widespread deceptive practices that limited consumers’ ability to make informed decisions. Today, if funeral homes violate the Rule, they may be subject to penalties of more than $51,000 per violation.
While this seems like a strong deterrent, the FTC granted the funeral industry a “sweetheart deal” more than 25 years, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). When funeral homes are found to be in violation of the Funeral Rule, they can opt to participate in the Funeral Rule Offenders Program (FROP), a training program run by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), which is the industry’s largest trade association and lobbying group. The offending funeral homes who enroll in the program become members of the association.
Essentially, the organization that lobbies lawmakers for fewer industry regulations is the same entity responsible for “policing” and penalizing offending businesses. NFDA conceals violations from American consumers and according to some experts, “it’s essentially a hush-money business.” However, the WSJ secured a list of 538 funeral homes that violated the Funeral Rule and publicly reported them earlier this year.
3. With no price transparency requirements for the funeral industry, consumers are highly vulnerable to overpaying.
In October 2022, the FTC revealed that more than 60 percent of funeral homes have little to no pricing information on their websites. This leaves consumers in a particularly vulnerable position.
“Imagine losing your child and then having to negotiate where their body goes and how much you’ll pay for it, all within hours,” says Mulheron. “When our own daughter was terminally ill, I called several funeral homes in hopes of identifying one where she could be taken once she died. Several told me they would ‘cut me a deal’ if she died soon. One facility, more than an hour away from our home, said, ‘We charge our flat rate for children of $400.’ We need more people like this leading the industry, not private equity brokers.”
Funeral costs for a single death event are significant, especially for families who struggle to cover the ongoing costs of housing, food, and medical care. According to a 2023 NFDA survey, the average cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial is nearly $8,300. A funeral with cremation costs only about $2,000 less.
These costs don’t take into account the costs of the cemetery, monument, marker, or other miscellaneous expenses, such as flowers. According to the Funeral Alliance Association, these added expenses often increase the total cost of full funeral services by $2,000 or $3,000.
4. Plan your funeral, but don’t prepay!
Following the WSJ’s release of the 538 funeral homes that violated federal law, a second WSJ article featured several stories of individuals who tried to act responsibly by paying for their own funerals in advance of dying. In some cases, their families ended up paying twice or more than the initial contracted amount. Whether it is lost paperwork, industry consolidation, “the fine print,” or something else entirely, it’s best to plan for the funeral but not pre-pay, then share your desires widely with family and friends.
5. Rather than regulate, your hard-working tax dollars are being used to reimburse funeral expenses.
In 2020, Congress passed a bill reimbursing some families for funeral expenses and only if they lost a loved one to COVID-19 (i.e., if your loved one died from overdose, homicide, or suicide, for example, you do not qualify for reimbursement). As of today, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA), responsible for managing taxpayer reimbursement dollars for funeral expenses, has distributed $2.8 billion to 438,000 approved applications, with an average award of $6,400.
Fortunately, the federal government is beginning to act. The FTC has initiated a regulatory process indicating it will reissue the Funeral Rule. Evermore submitted comments to the FTC and is continuing to follow along. However, this process can take years and there is no indication on when the FTC might act. There is reason to believe that the industry will sue the FTC when it does act, further delaying price transparency.
It’s time for the funeral industry to join the digital age by sharing prices online. If we, as a nation, focus on closing down children’s lemonade stands for operating without permits, we can easily protect consumers from the funeral industry’s bad actors. After all, as Benjamin Franklin said, “nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
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We welcome readers to share their experiences working with funeral homes — positive or negative, confusing, frustrating, or supportive. If you have a story to share, email us at hello@stagingevermore.dbdodev.com.
Jan 11, 2024 | Advocacy, Federal Government
Evermore Submits Comments to AHRQ on Interventions to Improve Care of Bereaved Persons
Bereavement’s long-standing absence from public policy debates and national health priorities, along with its newfound urgency, requires sound leadership and an aggressive agenda to address the substantial challenges confronting our nation’s grieving population. Today, America lacks a comprehensive, coordinated, and evidence-based bereavement care system that is protective and mitigates bereavement’s harmful effects across time and place. As a result, bereavement has major spillover effects at every stage of the life course, especially in the first two decades of life (for children and youth) and in mid-life (when family formation, child-rearing, and employment peak).
However, bereavement as a public concern is in its nascent stages and thus offers an unparalleled opportunity to leverage existing public and private healthcare initiatives to go “upstream” by delivering effective preventive services to stem the onset of chronic or debilitating health conditions associated with bereavement.
For example, in one 2020 register-based study examining the entire Norwegian population from 1986 to 2014, researchers found evidence of elevated alcohol-induced mortality among bereaved parents. Based on this evidence, healthcare providers should invoke existing quality alcohol misuse screening tools for bereaved parents to stem the short- and long-term ramifications of alcohol misuse following the death of a child. According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), unhealthy alcohol use screening among adults aged 18 presently receives a B rating. Healthcare providers attending to newly bereaved parents can identify the patient’s risk for developing alcohol misuse while also preventing the onset of addiction and reducing premature mortality. Evidence-based tools for grief and bereavement may be lacking, but alcohol misuse evidence-based resources are not.
Read the full letter..
Evermore’s groundbreaking advocacy efforts resulted in our nation’s first Report to Congress, which provided an overview of grief and bereavement services in the United States. Next year, a report analyzing more than 8,000 scientific studies will be published, reviewing the highest quality interventions for bereaved people — which was championed by Evermore and endorsed by Congress. 
We partnered with Newsweek, spotlighting stories of bereaved parents and how they have coped in the aftermath of their child’s death. Our work was featured on PBS NewsHour’s Brief But Spectacular and Harvard’s Public Health magazine, among others.