Editors’ Top 5, Week of October 9

How the Elderly Lose Their Rights
Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it. (Rachel Aviv/The New Yorker)

How Hurricane Responders Track People Whose Lives Depend on Power
The number of Americans who rely on the electrical grid to power life-sustaining home devices is soaring. Here’s how databases of the vulnerable can be and have been used to saved lives when disasters hit. (Christine Vestal/Stateline.org (TNS) via Seattle Times)

All the Work, Half the Pay
Lai Yee Chan is part of a cohort of New York home care workers that has filed more than a dozen class-action lawsuits against employers to challenge an industrywide practice known as the 13-hour rule, a state-sanctioned policy in which home care workers are paid for just 12 or 13 hours of a 24-hour shift. (Caroline Lewis/Crain’s New York Business)

Millennials Are Key to Solving Looming Nursing Shortage
Millennials are breathing new life into the nursing industry even as baby boomers are retiring en masse. (Tim Regan/Home Health Care News)

Absent Federal Action, States Take the Lead on Curbing Drug Costs
Lawmakers in Maryland are daring to legislate where their federal counterparts have not: As of Oct. 1, the state will be able to say “no” to some pharmaceutical price spikes. (Shefali Luthra/Kaiser Health News)