We’re very fortunate in Minnesota to have the Citizens League, one of the country’s leading citizen-based, non-partisan think tanks and their dynamic director Sean Kershaw. The League has generated many of our state’s most innovative policy ideas.Now the League is moving into aging. One of the focus areas of the League in this Minnesota’s Sequicentennial year is ‘Empowering Older Minnesotans.’ Specifically, the League is going to engage citizens in looking at how we can live more independently and fully as older Minnesotans. (Ecumen is helping sponsor this work.) The time to do this is NOW as the age wave is lapping on our shores.In 2004, Minnesota became one of the first states to adopt ‘cash and counseling,’ a program that allows Medicaid-qualified seniors to use Medicaid dollars for services that help them remain in their home. While the program can help many seniors stay out of higher-cost institutional care, only about 200 of an estimated 11,000 eligible seniors in Minnesota use that program today. We can do better … in Minnesota and across this country.