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« Choice Matters | Main | Otis Skinner and Jenny Joseph »
November 2, 2007 |Permalink |Comments (4)
Eyes Wide Shut
Last week a new national poll on long-term care in the 2008 elections was released. Commissioned by Genworth Financial, the fieldwork was done by Public Opinion Strategies and the Mellman Group it included this little gem...
- Nearly 7 in 10 Americans have not made any plans for their own, a spouse’s or another relative’s long-term care needs. Yet, over half of those surveyed have had a loved one who needed a form of long-term care.
Nicole and Tom are likely to be able to pay out of pocket for whatever kind of long-term care they, or the people they love, might need. Rolling in the bucks does not and can not, however, gurantee a life worth living. (Anyone seen Howard Hughes around lately?)
If you are reading this blog then you are very unlikely to be a multi-millionaire, international star of stage and screen.
The wealth that flesh and blood human beings need to need to live into advanced old age (or with a chronic disabling illness or injury) and retain personal dignity and autonomy must come in two forms...
1) Financial Capital. You know, the bacon (as in "bring home"), bread, dough, cabbage, lettuce, kale, folding green, long green, mazuma, moolah, oscar, pap, plaster, rivets, scratch, spondulicks, bone, buck, bullet, case note, clam, coconut, frogskin, lizard, peso, rock, scrip, simoleon, denaro, folding dead presidents-- cash.
2) Social Capital. This is one creative approach to the generation and investment of social capital.
Both kinds of wealth are necessary and neither is sufficient.
Comments ( 4)
I occurs to me that "Eyes Wide Shut" is also a good tag line for David Walker (GAO) to use on his fiscal wake up tour regarding our elected official's stance on the financial crisis facing America. Unfortunately he is not focusing any attention on the long term care costs for our elders. The 50 trillion dollar unfunded liability about which he speaks pertains to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security alone. I truly hope that we will "wake up" to the fiscal realities of aging.
On another point, thanks for linking up to the Elder Spirit Community site. I had not heard of or seen this before. Elderhood is so much more about attitude than latitude. It should not be about the width and breadth of our life line to date but how we approach each new day. The Elder Spirit Community mission statement speaks about "providing opportunities for growth through later life spiritual programs and through the formation of communities...". One's later years should be filled with "happy endings". After all, it is right here in plain english: Elderhood should be about being b -old and casting aside old inhibitions. Elderhood should be about breaking the m -old and exploring new interests. Elderhood should be about taking time to h -old your grandchild. And Elderhood should be about stories t -old about times past for new generations to learn from. I believe that the keys to a successful elderhood therefore are keeping "Eyes Wide Open", having a good attitude, and looking at the word old as a "happy ending".
ElderSpirit is amazing, truly someone’s dream come true. Count me in. As ideal as it seems to me, the right fit, thank goodness it exists, etc., it is clearly not right for all. Claire Estelle, my best friend’s mom (and also the name of the kitten we picked up at a dumpster on the drive home from her funeral) was on the waiting list for the retirement community in her town for years. All of her friends lived there but each time her name came to the top of the list she’d turn down the offer to enter. After a long stay in hospital this past summer she spent the last two months of her life at home alone. She never seemed happier. Claire had plenty of capital – cash and securities, as they are so aptly named, and a daughter that it turned out she could count on. 7 in 10 don’t plan for their long term care? No kidding. They are too busy planning on getting to work in the morning after far too little sleep; picking the kids up from all over the place; hoping to be able to pay the rent (or if they’re lucky, the mortgage), the minimum due on the credit cards, the dentist, the electric bill.
And here we are right in the middle of it all. We, with probably not enough money for ourselves, help our friend Duck who has no money. This man of many friends and lots of education finds himself fading away in a nursing home on SS and Medical. In the last year we can count on the fingers of one hand how many times his friends have visited. Social capital can't be counted on. I've discovered that.
I agree, this could be a good tag line for the fiscal wake up tour. Interesting though, Walker said in a smaller presentation that he does not consider long term care to be health care. After presenting the slides viewed in class to 2 different groups of approx. 40 people total, I think the tag line could be "mouths wide open". These presentations have invoked a lot of good conversation from all age groups regarding personal responsibility on our end.