Wilbur Post

Alan Young, a comedian and veteran supporting actor who found wide fame as an unlikely sort of second fiddle — the hapless straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed” — died on Thursday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 96.

Mr. Young had been a popular radio and television personality and had appeared in several films, including “Tom Thumb” (1958) and “The Time Machine” (1960), when, in his early 40s, he landed the role of Wilbur Post, the bumbling, well-meaning architect who owned a loquacious, fun-loving horse named Mr. Ed.

“Mister Ed” became a hit, running from 1961 to 1966 on CBS. The episodes usually revolved around Wilbur’s clumsy attempts to undo Ed’s mischief, situations made more difficult by the fact that Ed would speak only to Wilbur.

Mr. Young had a mischievous streak himself: Many years after the fact, he said he had started the rumor that the crew got Ed to “talk” by coating his mouth with peanut butter. Actually, the crew would place a piece of nylon in Ed’s mouth; the horse would then try to remove it by moving his lips, giving the illusion that he was talking when the voice of Allan Lane, a star of B westerns, was added. (Mr. Lane died in 1973).

In 1950 he brought “The Alan Young Show” to TV. It remained on the air until 1953. In 1951 it won the Emmy Award for best variety show, and Mr. Young won for best actor. (Sketch actors were included in that category at the time.)

Throughout the ’50s he appeared in numerous TV roles and on the variety shows of Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore and others. In later decades he made guest appearances on dozens of series, including “Death Valley Days,” “The Love Boat,” “Coach” and “ER.”

His last film was “Em & Me” (2004), an independent feature in which he played an elderly man traveling cross-country to visit his ex-wife’s grave.

Mr. Young was also a frequently heard voice in animated movies like “The Great Mouse Detective” and television cartoon series like “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and “The Smurfs.” He was the voice of Scrooge McDuck in several Disney projects.

He published two autobiographies: “Mister Ed and Me” (with Bill Burt) in 1995 and “There’s No Business Like Show Business ... Was” (2006), an account of his career and life in Hollywood.

Planning for long-term care

As part of retirement planning for my clients, I always ask them the question, “Have you planned for long-term care?” Very often the answer is no. I proceed to ask, “Why not?” The answers I often get are: “Don’t Medicare and Medicaid cover that?” “I told my wife to just let me make (pronounced mah-kay, Hawaiian for ‘die’) if I ever get into that situation” or “My children will take care of me.”

People who do answer “Yes, we have thought about long-term care” are almost always those people who have experienced it firsthand through their family members. They understand the financial and emotional burden that long-term care can cause for families.

So, what is long-term care? Long-term care is when people require assistance, both medical and nonmedical, because they cannot care for themselves. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 70 percent of those age 65 and over will require long-term care in their lifetime, and for married couples there is a 91 percent chance that one spouse will need long-term care at some point. Furthermore, the average amount of time that people stay in long-term care is three years.

Long-term care is the biggest threat to your retirement nest egg because of how expensive it is to get care, especially here in Hawaii. According to Genworth Cost of Care Survey 2015, Hawaii’s average annual cost of adult day care was $19,000 and a whopping $135,000 for a stay in a nursing home. Not many retirees have enough income to cover that kind of expense, yet many people overlook this in their retirement planning. Also, relying on your children can create a huge burden as they might already have their plates full with careers and raising their own children. We refer to them as the sandwich generation.

Now let me clear up some misconceptions that people often have when it comes to paying for long-term care:

1. “Medicare will pay for my care.”

Medicare will not cover most long-term care expenses because the majority of these services are considered “custodial care.” Custodial care is nonmedical assistance for daily living activities such as bathing, eating, dressing and using the toilet. And even if you require medical care, there are stringent requirements that you must meet to get Medicare coverage. For example, you must be hospitalized for a minimum of three days, then transferred to a long-term care hospital within 60 days of discharge. Even if you meet these requirements, Medicare will cover only up to 100 days of care. It covers 100 percent of the first 20 days, then after that, you are responsible for a copayment of $157.50 per day. After the 100 days you are responsible for the entire bill on your own.

2. “Medicaid will pay for my care.”

Unlike Medicare, Medicaid does cover long-term custodial care services. However, Medicaid is a joint federal and state program meant for low-income individuals. Medicaid applicants in Hawaii are disqualified if they have assets of $2,000 or more. You can’t transfer your assets to family members to try to qualify for Medicaid, as they will look back five years before the date you apply for Medicaid. When I found out that over half of all long-term care in the U.S. is paid by Medicaid, I was in disbelief. I thought to myself, “How can that many people have less than $2,000 in assets?” Then I realized they weren’t always broke; the long-term care bills made them broke. Those who don’t have long-term care insurance will begin by paying out of pocket. Then they will quickly run out of savings and eventually rely on Medicaid. That thought made me sad. These people who had worked hard to buy their home and build their life savings now have nothing. They are forced to spend the last years of their lives relying on government assistance. I wouldn’t want to end my life this way, nor do I want to see my parents in this type of dire situation.

How can we plan for long-term care so that we don’t have to become completely broke and rely on the government or our families to take care of us? There are several options.

Long-term care insurance: Long-term care insurance will have either daily or monthly coverage plans, with periods ranging from one year to lifetime coverage. Many of them also offer inflation protection so the benefits will continue to increase every year to keep up with the rising cost of care. One thing consumers need to be aware of with long-term care insurance is that insurance companies can raise the premiums on existing policyholders. Many policyholders were hit with huge increases (some up to 90 percent) in their premiums in the last five years. Insurance companies says it’s due to the lower-than-expected numbers of policies being canceled and a higher-than-expected number of people filing for claims. When insurance companies raise premiums, most of them will give the policyholder an option to either keep the same coverage and pay the higher premium, or lower the coverage in order to keep paying the same premium.

Life insurance with long-term care benefit: This type of insurance is becoming more popular. It is life insurance and long-term care insurance all in one. Some companies will even offer a spousal coverage, in which both spouses can be covered under one policy. The obvious benefit of life plus long-term care insurance is that if you and your spouse die without using the long-term care benefit, your beneficiary will receive the death benefit. However, according to the statistics, if you get a policy with your spouse, there is a 91 percent chance one of you will use it.

Self-insure, or saving money for potential long-term care needs: If this is the option you are choosing, you should save for at least three years of care. If you are married, multiple that by 2. Let’s do the math: $135,000 x 3 years x 2 people = $810,000. Let’s now add 2 percent inflation to that number. Say you’re 65 years old and you’re going to need care in 20 years. It’s going to cost you and your spouse more than $1.2 million — money you need to save in addition to your retirement. The majority of people are struggling to save enough for retirement income, so saving another $1.2 million is a stretch.

Whatever option you choose to protect yourself from the expense of long-term care, it’s important you have this conversation with your family so you have a plan for it. We have an aversion to discussing mortality, but it’s so important to have this discussion to avoid any disagreements among kids, or having to race the clock to establish a plan. Have it in place while you’re still sharp and healthy. The irony I see too often is when people are healthy, they don’t want to talk about it. When they become ill and realize they need a plan, it’s too late to get any sort of protection. With anything in life, proper planning will help you avoid a lot of stress and problems down the road. So talk to your family and your financial adviser today to make sure you (and your parents) have a solid long-term care plan in place. It gives you great peace of mind knowing exactly how you will be taken care of and how that care will be paid for.

Kana Aikawa is a financial adviser at Wealth Managing Partners, Inc. She has a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Management from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Reach her at 954-7072.

The Dalai Lama's map of the mind

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Dalai Lama, who tirelessly preaches inner peace while chiding people for their selfish, materialistic ways, has commissioned scientists for a lofty mission: to help turn secular audiences into more self-aware, compassionate humans.

That is, of course, no easy task. So the Dalai Lama ordered up something with a grand name to go with his grand ambitions: a comprehensive Atlas of Emotions to help the more than seven billion people on the planet navigate the morass of their feelings to attain peace and happiness.

“It is my duty to publish such work,” the Dalai Lama said.

To create this “map of the mind,” as he called it, the Dalai Lama reached out to a source Hollywood had used to plumb the workings of the human psyche.

Specifically, he commissioned his good friend Paul Ekman — a psychologist who helped advise the creators of Pixar’s “Inside Out,” an animated film set inside a girl’s head — to map out the range of human sentiments. Dr. Ekman later distilled them into the five basic emotions depicted in the movie, from anger to enjoyment.

Dr. Ekman’s daughter, Eve, a post-doctoral fellow in integrative medicine research, worked on the project as well, with the goal of producing a guide to human emotions that anyone with an Internet connection could study in a quest for self-understanding, calm and constructive action.

“We have, by nature or biologically, this destructive emotion, also constructive emotion,” the Dalai Lama said. “This innerness, people should pay more attention to, from kindergarten level up to university level. This is not just for knowledge, but in order to create a happy human being. Happy family, happy community and, finally, happy humanity.”

Larry Price leaving Perry and Price

Radio’s power pair will part ways, as Larry Price will step away from co-hosting the long-running, top-rated “Perry and Price” morning radio show on KSSK-FM 92.3/AM 590 at the middle of this month.

An announcement from station parent company iHeartMedia Honolulu said he is making the move to “focus on other interests” within the company, and did not explain the reason.

Price, 81, instead will co-host a sports show with Rick Hamada on sister station KIKI-AM 990, known as FOX Sports 990. It will air Saturdays at 11 a.m. beginning later this month.

“I decided the time is right and appropriate to make this change,” Price said in a statement, further expressing gratitude for the “support of our loyal listeners and for all the great years on KSSK.”

He and Perry have co-hosted the show for 33 years, following the death of their predecessor, highly rated radio personality Hal Lewis, who went by J. Akuhead Pupule, or “Aku” for short.

“Being a market’s No. 1 radio show for 33 years is unheard of in American radio,” said Chuck Cotton, president and general manager of iHeartMedia Honolulu.

Their self-introduction, “Perry on the left” and “Price on the right,” never was intended to be a reflection of their political leanings. Rather, it was a spur-of-the-moment comment relative to where each was standing in the studio their first morning on the air. The phrase stuck even though Price is a staunch Democrat, while Perry’s conservative views are well-known to listeners.

Price “certainly deserves the opportunity to sleep a little more, and work a little less,” said Perry.

Price initially was hired by KSSK as vice president of community relations in 1977, not long after his two-year stretch as the head football coach for the University of Hawaii.

Price also worked as an investigative reporter for KITV in the 1980s; a decade in which he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and became an MBA professor at Chaminade University, where a classroom and scholarship have been dedicated in his name. Price also was a columnist for MidWeek for many years, until his last “The Right Price” column appeared in the weekly publication on April 14.

His rise to household-name status started during his football playing days at Roosevelt High School, the University of Hawaii, and with the Los Angeles Rams.

The duo will do their last broadcasts together from the stations’ Iwilei studios this week, and then will air live shows from a cruise next week for the final time.

Perry will continue handling the morning show and the live broadcasts of the Saturday morning breakfast show solo, the station announcement said.

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In 1977 Larry Price gave a speech that would change his life. His friends don’t remember the specifics, only what happened next.

As Price spoke at a public gathering, Cec Heftel, then the owner of KGMB AM-FM radio, watched how the former University of Hawaii-Manoa football coach mesmerized the audience with wit and humor. Heftel decided right then to hire Price.

“He said, ‘I want this guy on my team. I don’t know what he will do, but I want him on my team,’” recalled Dale Machado, who had been hired by the station only two months earlier. “I remember they gave him an office in a storeroom. There was junk in the room, and he had his desk there.”

Inauspicious as that was, the job put Price on a path to the top of Hawaii radio and a 33-year command of the morning airwaves. Although Heftel gave Price a public relations job, he paired him with Michael W. Perry in 1983, and “The Perry &Price Show” quickly became the No. 1 choice for morning listeners — a position the show has maintained with few interruptions ever since.

But on Thursday, Price, 81, retired from the show as it broadcast from a statewide cruise on the Pride of America.

It was a low-key departure, with nothing said at the end of the broadcast.

“Nobody really talked about it,” Ma­chado said. “Larry is a very private man. He didn’t want to make a big deal of it. Nothing special was said.”

Price’s departure, announced last week, doesn’t mean the end of “The Perry &Price Show.” KSSK plans to continue airing it under the same name, but with Perry as the solo host. And Price will co-host a weekly sports show on sister station KIKI-AM 990.

[wait, I'm hearing Larry Price on the radio now as I'm writing this.  I guess he didn't leave yet?]

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5/27/16 - The Legend of Larry Price