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August 30, 2007

Who is Dr. Bill Thomas?

Dr. Bill Thomas is an international authority on geriatric medicine and eldercare. He is a professor at the Erickson School at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and has been heavily involved in the culture change movement to promote elderhood as an honorable and valuable position in our society. Click here to read more.
Eldertopia and the New Old Age

Dr. Bill Thomas: Eldercare, aging and us

Dr. Bill Thomas speaking at the 2007 Pioneer Conference, Part 1:

Dr. Bill Thomas at the 2007 Pioneer Conference Part 2:

What Is Old Age For?
by William Thomas

Old age is humanity's greatest invention, and on an even deeper level, it invented us. Old age transformed the way our most distant ancestors gave birth, reared their young, lived together, and fed themselves. Later it propelled the development of culture, language, and society.

Humans are primates, and among all primates we are most closely related to chimpanzees. We hold 98 percent of our genetic code in common with them. Yet a comparison of human and chimp life cycles reveals some unexpected differences.

Human beings can live twice as long as our nearest relatives—surprising in itself. Astonishing, however, is that all of this additional longevity follows the loss of fertility. Chimp and human females become fertile at nearly the same age and remain fertile for about four decades. For the aging chimpanzee, death follows hard on the heels of the loss of fertility. The human female possesses a nearly 50-year longevity bonus that follows the end of fertility. Our post-reproductive longevity exists because it affords our species a unique and powerful competitive advantage. Hidden within this extraordinary elongation of life is the story of who we are and how we came to be.

The first grandmother
One million years ago on the plains of Africa, a hominid child cries out from hunger. Her mother has recently given birth and is distracted by the needs of her helpless infant. The delivery was long and difficult and much blood was lost. The mother barely has the strength to nurse her infant. She can neither feed nor care for her older child. The mother of the new mother, the grandmother of the crying child, is moved to act. Thus was the first tentative step taken down the long road that led to the development of the modern human being. The deliberate enlistment of grandparents into the work of rearing the young stands as a defining characteristic of Homo sapiens.

Substantial advantages accrue to offspring who can be cared for by two generations of adults. The extra food and attention significantly improve survival rates. University College researchers in London found that in Gambia, infant mortality rates dropped by 50 percent if the maternal grandmother was present in the household (interestingly, no benefit was found when the paternal grandmother was in residence). Ruth Mace, one of the researchers, noted that the presence or absence of the father had no bearing on infant survival: “If the grandmother dies, you notice it; if the father does, you don't.”

Research in India has found similar results. Surely the grandmothers' contributions of time, energy, and material resources across generational lines are important, but that is not all there is to it. Humans, in particular humans living in active multigenerational families and communities, benefit from intergenerational affection.

The genius of human longevity
The development of menopause and the refinement of grandparenting played a critical role in the physical evolution of the modern human, but the story does not stop there. About 40,000 years ago, another remarkable round of adaptations changed how people lived. Homo sapiens generalized the benefits of grandparenthood by linking old age to the work of social evolution. The development of human culture—its refinement, storage, and transmission—was woven into the fabric of old age.

An African proverb says, “The death of an old person is like the loss of a library.” In these words are embedded the important role given to older adults in many African cultures. After a person has productively lived his or her life as an adult in the community, he or she is honored by initiation into the elder circle. This usually happens around the age of 65.

These elders, now masters of the school of life, have the responsibility for facilitating the transition from childhood to adulthood of new generations. They are responsible for and oversee the process of initiation. The idea of elders as “library” also reveals the fact that only the elders have full access to the tribe's knowledge base. The elders safeguard the highest secrets of the tribe and protect its medicine and inner technologies. They incarnate the wisdom of the society, which they happily share, often in the form of storytelling.

Anyone in the last half of life can attest to the difficulties, the aching joints, the fading eyesight. What is open to interpretation is the meaning of these changes. What if they are understood as a form of preparation (not unlike adolescence) for a new life as an elder of the community?

The physical decline that comes with aging actually cements the relationship between old and young. Indeed, an old man still capable of stalking, killing, and butchering a mastodon would have little inclination to spend hours doting on grandchildren, telling them stories, and instructing them in the ways of their people. An old woman still capable of producing young of her own would hardly be inclined to pour time, love, and attention into the lives of her grandchildren. The physiological changes that accompany old age, and upon which contemporary society heaps unlimited scorn, are actually essential preconditions for a socially productive old age.

Human elders have long been known as peacemakers, and for good reason. The physical changes that accompany advancing age make conflict, armed and otherwise, worthless to the old. Like statesmen serving their final terms in office, elders are freed from the tactical maneuvering that defines the struggle for adult rank and prestige. It is this freedom that allows them to put forth unique interpretations of the problems faced by their families and communities. The awareness of one's mortality that normally arises in late life—and so terrifies adults—opens new perspectives for elders on the world in which they live.

Being an elder
The promises of the current anti-aging fad perpetuate an illusion of unlimited longevity. This strengthens the characteristic adult devotion to doing, having, and getting. The result is an underdeveloped, increasingly dysfunctional population of developmentally delayed adults who are prone to catastrophic errors of judgment. The mania for
having and getting diminishes the value of stewardship in our culture. The preservation of resources for the benefit of those yet to be born, or even for the common good of those living now, is airily dismissed as simple-minded idealism. At the root of it all is the adult fantasy of unlimited time, unlimited wealth, unlimited resources, and unlimited information.

Adulthood itself is a right and fine thing. I am an adult. I love adulthood. I find daily pleasure in living as an adult and have no interest in returning to the childhood I have outgrown. Nor am I ready to enter into an elderhood that requires perspective, experience, and judgment that I do not yet possess. Adulthood, rightly understood, provides us with a productive, potentially glorious interlude between youth and old age. The problems begin when we conceive of it as a permanent necessity, an apex of human experience that must be defended and enlarged no matter what the cost.

Adulthood is chained to the rock of doing. When two adults meet, it is rare for more than a minute to pass before one of them pops the question, “What do you do?” Adults inhabit a world of tasks and schedules, payments, obligations, and jobs that need to be done. Yet in all this busy doing, they may ignore deeper questions of whether those tasks are worth doing and whether they foster meaningful relationships. These are questions not of doing but of being.

Doing and being are best thought of as two sides of one coin. As humans age, the action-oriented strategies of DOING-being give way to the indirect and subtle influence of BEING-doing.

Consider how adults and elders bake cookies. The adult tends to approach cookie baking as one more item on a long list of things to do. The children are either banished from the proceedings or—if the adult is feeling particularly guilty about a perceived deficit in the “quality time with the children” account—the children will be included, with some apprehension. The cookies are baked with dispatch, and dire warnings about eating raw cookie dough (possibly salmonella) are issued along with lessons about the virtue of cleaning up as you go.

The elder is much more likely to want to bake cookies than to have to bake cookies. As a result, children are more than welcome. Eating raw cookie dough? “Never mind what your mother says; go right ahead.” Flour, sugar, and eggs are used with abandon. Bizarre and experimental cookie shapes are welcomed. The crucial difference between the adult and the elder is that the former is fixated on the doing while the latter seeks the being. The adult cares about the cookies and is happy to log some quality time if possible. The elder cares about the relationship and is content with the cookies no matter how they turn out.

The central social and cultural challenges of our time revolve around the malignant enlargement of adulthood and the adult obsession with DOING-being. Adulthood, intoxicated by its own might, is intent on remaking youth and old age in its image. It has already defined the best child as the most precocious child. The wunderkind mimics adult behaviors and styles of work and learning. Likewise, adulthood demands that those who would remain worthy defy their age and continue to think, walk, talk, look, and work like adults.

Liberating elders
In 21st century America, only two categories of people still face routine and even permanent institutionalization—criminals and the elderly. In the last half of the 20th century, prisons and nursing homes both experienced a steady rise in the number of inmates. The true nature of the nursing home is especially obvious to those schooled in the ways of institutions. One prisoner wrote to tell me how much the nursing homes where he visited his grandmother reminded him of prison, and I have received many communications like this one from a former nursing home resident:

I have recently returned from “rehabilitation care” in a nursing home. I have pretty severe cerebral palsy and had breast cancer surgery. The nursing home environment did more to slow the healing process than help. I got a terrifying glimpse into a future in such facilities. I would rather die than have to exist in such a place where residents are neglected, ignored, patronized, infantilized, demeaned, where the environment is chaotic, noisy, cold, clinical, even psychotic.

Early advocates for the aged understandably concentrated their efforts on eradicating the mistreatment of the old. They were among the first to speak openly against the agism and overt bigotry practiced toward the aged. The much broader effort to liberate elders and elderhood, however, has yet to be truly begun. Such a crusade is necessary not because it can right wrongs that are visited on older people (although it can) but because it is the essential precondition for a new culture committed to a better quality of life for people of all ages.

The elder-guided society (I call it Eldertopia) is and should be run by the vigorous adults of the time. Elders should intervene at critical points to ensure that the adults take into account perspectives that are too easily ignored by those gripped by the fever of rank and wealth.

Since 1900, the percentage of Americans over age 65 has more than tripled, and those who reached age 65 in 1998 could expect to live on average another 17.8 years. Far from being ravenous locusts determined to consume an ever-increasing share of scarce resources, our growing number of elders represents an unprecedented windfall. I believe that the elders of our time form the only force capable of returning adulthood to healthier bounds. Consider the gifts a liberated elderhood could offer our society.

Elders have always made important contributions to the young of their families and communities. For thousands of years, relationships between young and old have made life better for both groups. In Eldertopia, all school construction and remodeling projects would include housing and community services for elders.

Elder councils could provide a balancing perspective that considers the long-term consequences of any proposed action. The topics addressed might well include matters that the conventional political system would rather sweep under the rug.
Elders have long spoken for Earth, its living creatures, and the children who are yet to be born. Eldertopia would have an Elder Conservation Corps that would tackle projects that strengthen the health and vitality of the natural world.

Any honest accounting of the potential influence of elders and elderhood must address the contributions not only of fit and energetic elders. It must recognize the contributions that people who are weak, ill, infirm, dependent, demented, disabled, and dying can make to this struggle. The old and frail are able to surmount the dizzy bustle that clings to the young—to enter a time and place in which the spiritual and emotional dimensions of human life take precedence over the humdrum workings (and failings) of organs, tissues, and systems. This is among the most admirable of all human endeavors. What the old and frail do is show us the way. They provide us with greater insight into and a clearer perspective on the human condition.

The most elder-rich period of human history is upon us. How we regard and make use of this windfall of elders will define the world in which we live.

Adapted from What Are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World, by William H. Thomas, M.D., copyright 2004. Used by permission of VanderWyk & Burnham (www.VandB.com), Acton, Massachusetts. All rights reserved. William Thomas is a geriatrician who created the Eden Alternative and the Green House Project .

Posted by Kavan Peterson on August 30, 2007 7:57 PM |Permalink |Comments (1)

September 10, 2007

Time Gets it Wrong

A report on national service by one of our national news magazines is a good thing but what message do Time's editors choose to emphasize with the cover art?

National Service is, or could be, a good thing. (Full disclosure, I never served in the military, Peace Corp, Vista or any other kind of National Service myself.) The problem is that the magazine slants its National Service coverage toward the issue of youth and service and away from what elders are already doing to advance the common good. This framing is consistent with the dominant cultural theme which says: "Old Age Equals Decline." If that was true (and it is not) then the only hope for our society would lie with the young. In fact, we live in a time when there is an unprecedented opportunity for young and old to be together, work together and make change together.

The model who sat as Rockwell's model is now an 83 year old grandmother. The iconic image of the original "Rosie the Riveter" remains powerful image because, even six decades after it was made, it retains the capacity to remind us that some things are worth struggling for and sometimes the struggle for the good can be found close to home-- in our own neighborhoods and communities.

So- in the spirit of Time's Rosie Remix, I have a challenge for UMBC's Visual Arts/Graphics Majors--- Make me a remix of the Time cover that gives that poor woman on the cover a mighty mane of Gray Hair and some wrinkles. Send your Remixes to me at wthomas@umbc.edu and be sure to put "Remix" in the Subject line. I will post the best of them on this blog.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on September 10, 2007 9:13 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

September 17, 2007

Good Old Medicines

Opened my mailbox today (the real metal kind of mailbox at the end of the driveway) and found an interesting article in the most recent edition of the AMA News. "Trials of Treating the Elderly" offers a nice introduction to the risks new drugs pose to older patients.

The Money Quote:

"Older participants are not usually recruited for clinical trials, leaving the path to proven treatments littered with uncertainty."

New drugs are tested on sample populations that consist-- mostly-- of younger people. So when the drug is approved and comes to market (and the advertisements hit the airwaves) the older people who are the first to use that new drug are, in a frighteningly real way, to much larger risks with much less information than younger patients.

When it comes to prescription drugs newer is not always better. The "seven-year rule" suggests that (except in extraordinary circumstances) older patients should avoid medications that have been on the market for less than seven years.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on September 17, 2007 2:44 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

Health Care Organizations Stress Their Employees

Nurses agree, this is not exactly news.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on September 17, 2007 3:11 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

September 18, 2007

Eden Up North

I found this nice article on the success of one Eden Alternative long-term care organization, the Burquitlam Lions Care Centre in British Columbia. Read the full article here

Eden%20Intergen.jpg

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on September 18, 2007 11:00 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

King Lear

The first ever Erickson School Masters of Aging Services class kicks into gear next week and I am team teaching the Aging 600 class with Judah Ronch. Our course looks at issues and controversies in aging and uses Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear" as an central element of the course. I am going to be blogging on my experience with the class all semester and wanted to kick off the topic with a nice online illustrated story version of the play. You can also listen to me discuss Lear on NPR by clicking here.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on September 18, 2007 1:02 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

September 24, 2007

Kaboom: NYT lowers the boom on for-profit nursing homes

Sunday's NYT pulls back the curtain on the practice of "flipping" nursing homes for profit. There is money to be made and some people are making lots of money. No problem there, this America after all and making a buck is an honored tradition. No, the problem is that there are real problems with safety, quality and dignity. The article can also be read as a cautionary tale regarding health care as a profit making activity. In my opinion, the best starting point is health care as a right not an industry. Click here to read the full article.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on September 24, 2007 2:47 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

October 3, 2007

They Can't Help It

I was just going back over the summary of research from the Ohio State press office. I can't believe I missed it the first time but the headline for the press release...

Older people are more prejudiced -- and they can't help it

... is almost exactly the opposite of what the researcher claims and the data show.

Wow. Somebody blew that one.

Still they did get the story placed in Newsweek and the Newsweek story was much better than the press release.

I'm just sayin'

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 3, 2007 1:58 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

October 4, 2007

(Not So) Gray Hair

This is a nifty example of almost (but not really) getting it.

You begin with some pretty "far out" and "crazy" talk like this from an AP article on the to "Gray or Not to Gray" controversy...

"Kathy Kolbe, a Phoenix-based public speaker and consultant to corporations on human instincts, is one of the comparatively few gray-haired women in business. After alternating between dyed and not, she declares herself now “permanently gray” after concluding it is an advantage in more ways than one.

"She noticed she got lots of offers of help on her business travels when gray peeked through — from hoisting bags into overhead bins on airplanes to other assistance — and “pretty much nobody offered help” when it was hidden.

“So I let the whole head go gray and, voila, doors magically opened,” said Kolbe, 65.

She senses the “look of wisdom” also has a positive impact on both employees and clients."

Then you talk about what you do...

"Gray Hair Management currently provides professional coaching to managers and executives to help them win the race for a new opportunity using unique techniques and processes."

Then you go with the visuals because, after all, every picture tells a story don't it.

Umm. Nice photo. Where's the Gray Hair?

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 4, 2007 2:31 PM |Permalink |Comments (3)

October 5, 2007

Exhibit A: Why Oh Why is Health Care Reform so Hard to Do?

Let's say that Congress decided to get behind some incremental changes in one part of our medical industrial economy. It could even get all optimistic and cool and call its package of proposals the “CHAMP Act.” The bill might, for example, improve coverage and benefits for children, extend Transitional Medical Assistance for people enrolled in “Welfare to Work” programs and, make it easier for elders to continue using community-based Adult Day Service Programs. Well that's exactly what it did and the AMA , AARP and National Association of Children's Hospitals have all applauded this legislation. Nice huh?

Oh, there is one more thing, CHAMP also...

“Takes into account recommendations from the non-partisan Medicare
Payment Advisory Commission, the bill refines payments for a variety of
institutional providers including skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation
facilities, long-term care hospitals, cancer hospitals and rural and small urban
hospitals.”

It turns out that the nation's for-profit nursing home chains (and their defenders in Washington) are just not that into the cancellation of multi-billion dollar funding increases in their future revenues.

"The CHAMP Act, as it now stands in the House Ways and Means Committee, is highly detrimental to the long term care needs of 'America's Greatest Generation' as well as future generations - contrary to the claims being made by its proponents," stated Bruce Yarwood, President and CEO of AHCA.

So what does a big-time Washington lobbyist do?

WHY%20Ad.jpg
How about running attack ads directed specifically at freshman Representatives who dared voted against the perceived interests of the nursing home industry? Here is the ad being run against Tim Walz in Minnesota's First Congressional District.

Congressman's Walz's is pushing back against the nursing home industry's fearmongering.

“For too long, these private insurance companies and big nursing home chains have reaped the benefits of Medicare overpayments, and when I voted for the CHAMP Act, I voted for legislation that will help the most vulnerable of our community: our low-income children and seniors.

The people of the First District don’t have to buy expensive and deceptive ads. They don’t have to hire expensive lobbyists. People in southern Minnesota can be confident that I have and will continue to cast votes that are in the interest of our children and seniors, no matter how many full page, color ads costing thousands of dollars the special interest groups can buy.”

Read the full text of his statement here.

So what's new? Congress withdraws promised increases in the nursing home industry's funding stream. The industry's lobby lashes out at the CHAMP Act's Congressional supporters (especially freshmen). Little changes. Another battle is won, lost or drawn.

It is easy to see that the American medical industry is huge and exceptionally powerful. Each component of that industry holds a laser focus on its own needs first and foremost. Each component has its own individual war chest that it can you to attack elected officials who refuse to do its bidding.

It is also easy to see that the public supports fundamental change in our health care system. Hundreds of millions of people can see and are appalled by the waste, the injustice and the failure to produce the quality health care outcomes enjoyed by citizens of other industrial nations. Despite the urgent need for reform, nothing happens.

It turns out that attack ad is asking the right question: “Why?”

A few years back, Jonathon Rauch wrote a brilliant book (Demosclerosis) that explained the paradox of popular support for change being stymied by gridlocked inaction.

Scott London captured the the crux of Rauch's argument nicely...

“In a stable, democratic society, pressure groups inevitably form to persuade government to redistribute resources their way... Taken one at a time, these benefits have practically no effect on society as a whole, so no countervailing group arises to stop the waste. But, taken as a whole, group demands gradually sap the effectiveness and flexibility of government to the point where no program can be cut and no subsidy eliminated without arousing vehement opposition from some group or another. As the number of interest- groups in a society increases, and as the benefits secured by groups accumulate, the economy rigidifies. By locking out competition and locking in subsidies, interest-groups capture resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.”

As a physician, I believe that this kind of insightful diagnosis is a starting point for action. I believe that our national health care policy is being held strangled by a powerful industrial complex. The only thing that can break its grip is a counter-force of educated citizens who can see past the spin, the self-serving distortion and the outright hypocrisy--- and are willing to stand together and fight.

When I was in medical school a fellow student started his third year (the most challenging phase of medical school) by posting a sign on his dorm room door. It read: “I must therefore I can.” Today I would amend that statement. “We must therefore we can.” In fact it's already happening. Take a look at VOTER Mel Strand's counter-attack on lobbyist-generated attack ads running in his hometown paper.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 5, 2007 8:45 AM |Permalink |Comments (1)

Sedated

ChangingAging reader/commenter Margie Buck writes:

Thanks for the update on the new blog site. I loved the youtube Ramones "sedated". Will share it with many. look forward to seeing you all in Columbus OHIO (The Eden Alternative International Conference will be held in Columbus in June of 2008-- WHT)

So without further ado, here is the thoroughly up-to-date remake of the Ramone's classic "I Wanna Be Sedated."

Enjoy.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 5, 2007 1:11 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

October 8, 2007

Smack Down

The Gimp Parade lays a smack down on private, for-profit investors who are, increasingly speculating in the nursing home real estate market. Blogger Kay Olsen highlights the following from the recent New York Times article that covered this issue.

"The typical nursing home acquired by a large investment company before 2006 scored worse than national rates in 12 of 14 indicators that regulators use to track ailments of long-term residents. Those ailments include bedsores and easily preventable infections, as well as the need to be restrained. Before they were acquired by private investors, many of those homes scored at or above national averages in similar measurements."

What does she want to do about this?

"One of the demands of ADAPT at the recent sit-in at the Chicago headquarters of the American Medical Association [see the AMA's policy on the use of restraints in nursing homes here-- WHT] was that doctors divest themselves of financial interest in the nursing homes they recommend to their clients."

I agree with and support ADAPT's position on the divestment issue.

"While there is a movement by aging Boomers gaining steam to make nursing and assisted living institutions into communities where people can go to live happily instead of going there to wither of neglect and die, a key factor in the injustices visited upon the people who end up in these homes is that continued institutionalization with minimal service and minimal care financially benefits someone else."

When you get down to it, the paragraph above is the core of a moral argument against health care as a purely profit-driven "marketplace" and for the enlargement and preservation of human dignity and freedom of choice as a fundamental human right.

When the profits of corporations in the medical-industrial sector come to take precedence over the life and death needs of ordinary citizens we have a prescription for disaster.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 8, 2007 2:40 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

Drive to Vote

The Brad Blog reports on a speech by John Tanner, the Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice. The videotape was rolling when Chief Tanner cut loose with views on how new laws requiring voters to show a photo ID will impact elders.

He allows that its "a shame" that older voters may be disenfranchised by new Photo ID restrictions at the polls because many don't have driver's licenses, however, minorities don't have to worry quite as much.

Why?

Because "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

In Chief Tanner's world, old brown people don't even exist so I guess they can hardly be expected to vote.

Nice. Real nice.

In case you were wondering about John Tanner here is a quick sketch...

As a teenager growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, John Tanner found himself in the middle of the battleground over civil rights in America. "That was what was happening in Birmingham, it was sort of the center of the world," said Tanner, who is now chief of the Voting Rights Section of the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, in a Nov. 9 speech in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, sponsored by the American Constitution Society. "Civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s was everything. That's what everyone talked about all the time. You were pretty much on one side or the other. And I was on the other."

The full text of the Tanner profile quoted above can be found here.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 8, 2007 9:39 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

October 9, 2007

The Blue Screen of Death

I am not sure how I feel about the makers of Windows TM becoming the holders of America's health information.* Here is a quick summary. The company toots its own horn here.

* This blog is written on a Mac G5. I'm just sayin'.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 9, 2007 6:45 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

October 11, 2007

McArdle Care

Megan McArdle--currently blogging at the Atlantic-- continues to defend a post, which she initially posted at her previous bloggy home.

...as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health. They didn't eat right or excercise; they smoked; they didn't go to the doctor as often as they ought; they drank to much, or took drugs, or sped, or engaged in dangerous sports. Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others.
Perhaps they deserve it by virtue of suffering? But again, most of them are suffering because they have gotten old, often in high style. The young of today have two possible outcomes:

1) They will be old and sick too, in which case they are no less deserving of our concern than today's old and sick

2) They won't ever get to be old and sick, which is even worse than being old and sick.

As a class, the old and sick are already luckier than the young and healthy. Again, for individuals within that class--those with desperate congenital conditions, for example--this is not the case. But I'm not sure it's terribly compelling to argue that we should massively disadvantage a large group of people in order to massively advantage another, equally large group of people, all to help out the few who are needy, or deserving, or unlucky.

Emphasis added.

Translation: The old and sick are mostly to blame for their oldness and sickness so why should the young and healthy have to carry their burden when they are not to blame?

Left unasked (and unanswered) is the question, "Who helped the youth and healthy grow up young and healthy? Or did they simply spring from the Earth with no help from any other living beings?

Can anyone guess Ms. McArdle's age? Maybe this photo will help.

Will we still need her? Will we still feed her, when she's 64?

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 11, 2007 8:12 AM |Permalink |Comments (2)

October 13, 2007

Pro-Aging: Bare Skin Edition

YOUTH=BEAUTY
AGE= UGLY

These are the equations that drive ALMOST all of our media, advertising and (too often) art.

Dove deserves kudos for challenging these assumptions and doing so with flair and style.

How AdFormula sees it...

Six, over-50 gorgeous women do their best 'calender girl' homage in this controversial campaign titled pro age campaign ,designed and executed by their time tested agency O&M,posing buck naked in the ad, which was banned from airing( see the tvc here) and landed Dove in all the mess,because it "showed too much skin". The positive side as I see it, is that it was the first time, that a brand, that took on skin care, was talking to women about aging in a positive tone...Dove, the global beauty brand, boldly challenged the “only young-is-beautiful” stereotype with this Campaign which aimed to sell pro aging (and not anti aging) products . Designed to expose what our anti-aging society has been hiding, proage celebrates women of 50+ by showing their honest, real beauty.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 13, 2007 7:48 AM |Permalink |Comments (1)

October 26, 2007

Endless Tales of Woe

nursing%20home.jpg
Those who know me and my work know I'm an insufferable optimist and am whole-heartedly dedicated to reversing the most intractably pessimistic aspect of our culture -- how we feel about AGING.

But, even my cheerful demeanor blanches every morning when I open my Google-New-Alerts for the two most unfortunate words in the LTC lexicon -- "Nursing Home."

Here is a sample of today's news:

Man Dies Trying To Escape Nursing Home CHICAGO -- A 66-year-old man died after falling from a second-story window at a Northwest Side nursing home Wednesday morning.
Kiril Kirilov, who may have suffered from mental disabilities, attempted to exit Harmony Nursing and Rehabilitation Center from a second floor window via bedsheets he tied together, according to an Albany Park District police officer.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

But wait -- it gets worse:

Seniors Fear Losing Independence, Moving Into Nursing Home More Than DEATH
Senior citizens fear moving into a nursing home and losing their independence more than death, according to a new research study, “Aging in Place in America,” commissioned by Clarity and The EAR Foundation.

Tragic, and painfully true. I will write more about this terrible reality soon. Click here to read the full study posted at MyHearingHealth.com.

However, there was one gem out of more than a dozen articles today on abuse, neglect and fraud:

'Home Again' will aid seniors who wish to move out of nursing home
TERRE HAUTE — A new program called “Home Again” will provide rental assistance to seniors on Medicaid who desire to move from a nursing home back into a more independent and affordable community setting.

If you're looking for another ray of hope, go to www.edenalt.org

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on October 26, 2007 10:24 AM |Permalink |Comments (6)

November 2, 2007

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.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on November 2, 2007 6:44 AM |Permalink |Comments (4)

November 9, 2007

Trigger Finger

All right, you've seen the picture. Write your own caption and leave it in the comments. Then you can go here and find out what it's really all about.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on November 9, 2007 6:40 AM |Permalink |Comments (3)

Power Up Friday

Dr. Al Power guest blogs on Fridays here at ChangingAging.org.

Musician, Physician and all around great guy, he dropped me a note concerning quotes from women about aging.

One comment comes to mind. I recently facilitated a Management Team Retreat for St. John's and we had an hour when we were addressed by elders from St. John's Meadows. One of the elders, Margaret Thirtle, is 92 and worked for many years for the Sibley's Corporation. During that time, she oversaw the visits of almost 200 celebrities to Rochester. Margaret told us that one such celeb, Gloria Swanson, "gave me some advice I'll never forget: She said, 'After 40, my dear, always sit with your back to the light!'"

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on November 9, 2007 11:19 AM |Permalink |Comments (2)

November 15, 2007

Never Too Old for the Tooth Fairy

A guest-post from the UMBC’s Kavan Peterson:

The closest thing China has to a tooth fairy might be Dwayne Arola, an engineering professor from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who has a thing for Asian choppers.

Prof. Arola is an innovative engineer here at UMBC who may be the Baby Boom generation’s best hope for maintaining a healthy set of teeth into later life. The Baltimore Sun’s Chris Emery explains in a news story today:

Not long ago, Arola returned from a trip to Shanghai with a plastic lunch box containing a dozen prime specimens from Chinese dental patients - large, cavity-free wisdom teeth - destined to endure a regimen of abuse that he once reserved for aircraft parts.

How the Chinese molars hold up under Arola's stress tests may explain why Chinese teeth are more brittle than American teeth. Ultimately, that knowledge might lead to a dental Fountain of Youth: a high-tech process to make old teeth young again, and less prone to cracking under pressure.

"We are trying to figure out how fast cracks grow and why they grow faster in older people," said Arola, 41. "Ultimately, we'd like to figure out how to arrest those cracks."

Bravo Prof. Arola! While exploitative anti-aging industries are making billions of dollars peddling farcical fountain of youth products that often harm people, it’s refreshing to see someone genuinely working to improve the quality of life for older adults.

Read more here about what inspired Prof. Arola -- an aerospace engineer by training – to tackle one of the brittlest facts of aging – teeth.

Posted by Kavan Peterson on November 15, 2007 10:58 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

November 27, 2007

No Aging For Old Men

A guest-post from the UMBC’s Kavan Peterson:

“That's what some male movie stars would have you believe - though the smart ones use age rather than fight it,” writes Boston Globe film critic Mark Feeney in a sharp review of how aging male movie stars act their age – or not -- in recent films.

Feeney offers a refreshing critique of the responses of Hollywood’s leading men to the inevitability of aging – which range, he says, “from furtive evasion to forthright embrace.” As Feeney rightly argues, Hollywood’s leading men tend to get a free pass when it comes to confronting age. Think Harrison Ford attempting to reprise his role as Indiana Jones at age 65 (that’s not a hypothetical -- we’ll get to see how gracefully Ford plays an aging Indiana Jones in the fourth installment of the franchise in 2008).

Here’s Feeney’s take on aging Hollywood hunks from a few recent films:

Tommy Lee Jones
'Age will flatten a man," Tommy Lee Jones says in "No Country for Old Men." Yes, it will. It can also deepen, strengthen, and enrich him, too. One look at Jones in "No Country" - or in "In the Valley of Elah" - and you see demonstrated the power of age to bring up as well as bear down.

Jones is 61 now, and in those movies the weight of every minute of his time on earth seems recorded on that face. A moonscape of seams, crags, and creases, Jones's visage doesn't look so much lived in as lived on - a spiritual terrain, an Old Testament geology. Even more than that bark of a voice or big-as-Texas presence, that face is what lends Jones his enormous onscreen authority.

George Clooney

You'd think gravitas would be no less a problem for someone as good looking as Clooney. But it isn't. Maybe it's as simple as not reaching for the Grecian Formula. Clooney's letting himself go gray was always a smart career move. He still looked great, but now had the aspect of a regular guy. It made him seem more honest - more serious, too. In "Syriana," he added a thickened waist and unbecoming beard (which made him a dead ringer for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman) and got himself an Oscar.

Clooney looks a lot better in "Michael Clayton," but he does nothing to disguise the effects of the wringer his lawyer-fixer character goes through: a giant lawsuit on the verge of collapse, a friend losing his mind, a very large debt needing urgent settlement. There are bags under the eyes, a puffy face, a general sense that soon enough the mirror will be as much enemy as friend. The movie ends with a very long close-up of Clooney sitting in the back of a taxi, and there's no mistaking that it isn't just the cab's meter that's running.

Robert Redford

Redford is more or less playing his age in "Lions for Lambs." He's a college professor who served in Vietnam, so he has to be at least 60, and probably older. Yet it's as if he's a superannuated Sundance Kid with tenure. The hair is as thick and golden as ever, the handsomeness little touched by the years.

Partly, that's the benefit of great facial structure (it's always the bones that go last). More than that, though, it's a suspiciously unlined dullness around the eyes that makes him look (there's no polite way to put this) weird. Is it Botox? Lighting? Makeup? Nipping and tucking? The strange thing is, in person, Redford's eyes look normal enough. Whatever the reason, their unblemished deadness in "Lions" helps make his performance all the more wooden - and Redford has never exactly been the most expressive of actors.

Tom Cruise

Underscoring the unfortunateness of Redford's unnervingly age-resistant appearance is the presence in "Lions for Lambs" of Tom Cruise. It's a good thing they don't have any scenes together or gerontology might never recover. Playing a very ambitious Republican senator, Cruise is the best thing in the movie - certainly the liveliest. Yet he seems so unbearably young. At 45, he suffers from a terminal boyishness that makes him seem like a can of Red Bull yearning to be a bottle of Bordeaux. The risky business of aging can cut both ways.

Dustin Hoffman

Wonder, if only titular, informs Hoffman's performance as the most aged character seen on screen this or any other season, in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium." The toy store owner is all of 243. Oddly enough, this isn't Hoffman's first crack at triple figures. Jack Crabb, the Indian-raised Western pioneer he plays in "Little Big Man," lives to be 121. Hoffman was 33 then, yet through the magic of latex he looked old, seriously, deathly, prune-shriveled old. The curious thing about Hoffman as Magorium, a character twice Crabb's age, is that he looks so, well, good. Does the AARP need a new spokesman? Magic will do that for a man, fictional or real - and when it comes to appearance, there's no magic like the movie-star kind.

Read the full review here.

What do you think? What actors or roles do you think provide a positive portrayal of aging? And what about the double-standard for female actors?

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on November 27, 2007 10:54 AM |Permalink |Comments (2)

November 30, 2007

Arkansas Celebrates First Green House

From Jeff Mores of the Benton Daily Record in Arkansas:

BENTONVILLE — There was a day when senior care meant moving into a hospital-style nursing home.
Things have changed. And in Arkansas, Bentonville’s Legacy Village is leading the way.

Click here to learn how.

Posted by Kavan Peterson on November 30, 2007 10:56 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

December 3, 2007

Time Goes By Goes Bye Bye

Man this is sad.

I accept it. I honor it and, in some ways I understand it. But still, it's a sad day for the elder blogosphere.

As of this post, Time Goes By is over.
The decision to do so has been building for the reasons below and other related ones, but response to today’s post – and it’s only 11AM here - tipped me over the edge. Isn’t it odd how often decisions are made on small events.

I can’t tell you which of half a dozen emails telling me that 60 isn’t old or you’re only as old as you feel or age is relative or whatever other excuse did it. It’s all bullshit. Old is old. The Crabby Old Lady in me is finished arguing that, along with all her versions of old-is-as-worthy-as-every-other-age.

Too many people want to slice and dice the language and proclaim their youthfulness in other ways unto the grave and if that is your position, this or any blog is unlikely to change your mind.

But all this age denial (the negative ones never publish publicly; they just rant in emails to me) before noon has made the decision for me. I’m out of energy to move forward with this.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on December 3, 2007 8:28 PM |Permalink |Comments (3)

December 5, 2007

List of Shame

A guest post from UMBC's Kavan Peterson:

In an unprecedented move, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is shining the public spotlight on America's Worst Nursing Homes by publicly releasing a list of 54 facilities with the most serious health and safety problems in the nation. Thanks to The Consumerist for alerting us to this development:

CMS has released the first-ever official list of America's Worst Nursing Homes— a move that leads us to suspect that the Department of Health & Human Services must be getting pretty fed up if they are resorting to public shaming. The list includes the 54 most egregious health and safety violators of the 128 SFF, or "Specialty Focus Facilities," in the U.S.
A Special Focus Facility is basically a nursing home that is on double-secret probation— subject to twice as many inspections as a non-SFFs, with the threat of funding cuts for non-compliance.

According to the CMS, the average facility isn't perfect (6-7 violations is the national average.) Those designated as SFFs are guilty of either more violations or more serious violations than usual, as well as a history of fixing problems just long enough to pass inspection, then going right back to business as usual. The CMS dubs this "yo-yo compliance," and the SFF program is designed to deal with it by combining more frequent inspections with more stringent enforcement until the nursing home falls back in line.

If the facility in question doesn't shape up, correct the underlying problems that lead to violations and "graduate" from the SFF program (in about 18-24 months) their funding is cut and they will likely close.

Of course, the first thing I looked for on this list was the names of any nursing homes that cared for loved ones in my family or employed members of my family. To my absolute dismay, I found that the only nursing home in Montana to make this infamous list was none other than Evergreen Missoula Health & Rehab. This facility not only cared for my wife's grandfather during the last months of his life, but it is located on the corner of the street I grew up on and where my parents still live today. I can only hope the public humiliation of making this list will work where government regulations and inspections have not.

Besides sharing this list with as many people as possible, CMS recommends families use its Nursing Home Compare tool to review the ratings of any nursing home they are considering.

For those looking for a ray of hope, go to www.edenalt.org

Posted by Kavan Peterson on December 5, 2007 9:55 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

December 10, 2007

Sunshine Down Under

Similar studies show the same results in the U.S. -- the older we are the less likely we are to be depressed, stressed and anxious:

Middle-aged 'more anxious than elderly'
Elderly Australians are less anxious and depressed than those in middle-age, according to a new study which paints a refreshingly bright picture of growing old.

A major survey of 5,000 people over 45 has found that baby boomers have significantly higher rates of psychiatric and anxiety disorders than those in their twilight years.

"This is a new and very positive view of ageing," said psychiatrist and co-investigator Dr Julian Trollor, from the University of New South Wales.

"The general perception out there is that disease and burden is what you've got to look forward to as you age, but we can be much more positive than that."

Read more in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on December 10, 2007 9:48 AM |Permalink |Comments (1)

December 11, 2007

Which Witch

Once again, science lags behind myth and legend.

This story...

"Our focus has always been on tightening and lifting the soft tissues, skin and muscle in an attempt to cosmetically restore patients' youthful appearance. Based on this information, it might actually be better to restore the underlying bony framework of the face to its youthful proportions."
Since growth plates found in most of the body's bones stop growing after puberty, experts assumed the human skull stopped growing then too. However, the bones that comprise the human skull have no growth plates.

Using CT scans of 100 men and women, the researchers discovered that the bones in the human skull continue to grow as people age. The forehead moves forward while the cheek bones move backward. As the bones move, the overlying muscle and skin moves as well and that subtly changes the shape of the face. "The facial bones also appear to tilt forward as we get older," explains Richard, "which causes them to lose support for the overlying soft tissues. That results in more sagging and drooping."

People have long understood and feared these changes and even created a mythic construct to deal with those fears...

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on December 11, 2007 6:52 AM |Permalink |Comments (0)

January 7, 2008

The Boomer Bash

[Editor's Note] Below is a post from the latest issue of Age Beat Online (ABO), an e-newsletter for the Journalists Exchange on Aging, which is an excellent network supported by the American Society on Aging. This post is longer than usual, but all our Baby Boomer readers will appreciate ABO Editor Paul Kleyman's rant.

NPR AND THE EDDIE HASKELL FACTOR: Remember Eddie Haskell, Wally’s selfish and conniving buddy on “Leave It to Beaver”? Nobody liked that phony. One would think that at least some in today’s national media would equate the boomer generation more with the Beav: bright, open, curious. But the boomer bashing that continues in mainstream media -- some of it purposeful attacks from those wishing to slash entitlement programs for elders, but much of it gratuitous -- seems to frame the boomers as the Eddie Haskell of generations. RODNEY DANGERFIELD got more respect.

Leave%20it%20to%20Beaver.bmp
(Eddie Haskell, The Beaver and Wally)

A case in point is JOHN YDSTIE’S piece on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this Wednesday (Jan. 2) titled “Baby Boomers Begin to Claim Social Security”. Ydstie, a usually fine reporter and fill-in anchor, starts, “America’s baby boomers have always thought they were special.” Later, “The culture of their youth still lingers in the air.” (That’s the “they’ll never grow up” cliché that’s become so prevalent.) Later still, “Baby boomers have always lived in denial of growing old. Age 62 is the new 50, right? Except that now you are eligible for a Social Security check.” And in discussing the small size of Gen X, which will yield a demolished workforce charged with covering Social Security’s ongoing costs, Ydstie opines, “Of course, that’s the baby boomers’ fault. They had fewer children.” Funny, this boomer remembers being told -- especially by Paul Erlich, a member of the older Silent Generation -- that having too many babies was irresponsible and would set off “The Population Bomb.”

What’s odd about Ydstie’s piece is that these smarmy asides were unnecessary. In a 7½ minute piece, a major story for broadcast, he gets most of his overview of Social Security right. Ydstie does fall into the usual trap of citing the shrinking ratio of workers to pay for the retirement of the aging boomers, a figure widely quoted but almost always misused, but he does not go on, as so many have, to declare that Social Security will be bankrupt and is in crisis. These outright fabrications were fed to the public through a largely unskeptical Washington press corps that had been cultivated by conservative think tanks since the early 1980s. Now it’s refreshing to see other sources cited to balance such claims.

Ydstie includes quotes by the venerable liberal economist HENRY AARON of the Brookings Institution and conservative ALAN VIARD of the American Enterprise Institute both agreeing that Social Security does not warrant, as Aaron put it, “a hysterical sense of urgency” and that Medicare is in a much more precarious financial state. (Ydstie didn’t quite get to the larger concern that Medicare and Medicaid are in trouble because of wider healthcare inflation, but his report is an improvement on past reporting.) At least on the issue of the shrinking fertility rate he didn’t cite rightist economists who have said -- I kid you not -- that young women today should show their patriotism by having more babies, unlike their irresponsible, bra-burning mothers of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

So, what’s with the nasty slams, the pseudo-psycho profiling of the selfish boomers? Is it just too cute to pass up a two-buck chuckle and doesn’t really seem to hurt anyone? Problem is that these kinds of group slurs are expressions of -- dare I say it -- prejudice. ABO has cited more vicious examples, notably Christopher Buckley’s novel “Boomsday,” a laugh-filled promotion of the idea that boomers will drain our children’s future -- and should have an assisted-suicide option for those presumed noble enough not to collect Social Security benefits.

I guess one shouldn’t expect too much originality around national newsrooms, but there is an alternative view: that an older population in which both men and women are healthier, well educated and widely experienced can be a boon to society. Ydstie does note that a longer-working population of elders can do much to close the current projections of Social Security’s 75-year shortfall. But reporters might also talk to someone like THEODORE ROSZAK, author of the 2002 book “Longevity Revolution: When Boomers Become Elders” (Berkeley Books). The historian, whose 1968 classic “The Making of a Counter Culture” added that coinage to the language, posits that older societies have always been wiser, kinder and gentler. There are others we could mention (Bob Butler for one) who can argue pretty convincingly that widespread longevity is not such a bad thing. Or reporters could note that most of the economic problems attributed to spendthrift, “me-generation” boomers have to do with poor management of the national economy. A couple of wars, some tax cuts for the rich, a subprime mortgage debacle, failure to control healthcare costs for the rich, and pretty soon you’re talking about a real crisis. Oh-oh.

But what about this seeming urge to psychologize about the alleged profligacy of an entire generation as if it were one character -- named Eddie Haskell. Even TOM BROWKAW has indulged in some of this couch-jockeying in recent interviews about his new book, “Boom: Voices of the Sixties” (New York City: Random House, 2007.) The characterization seems to spread through news copy like a virus.

A few real facts can be said about the boomer generation in the United States:

* At around 78 million, they are the biggest generation in history.
* The GI bill gave them better-educated parents and a large middle class, so they grew up with a higher standard of living than ever before.
* Universal compulsory education, still only a few decades old by 1946, accelerated after World War II for both boys and girls.
* The pill.
* The diversity of the boomers presents an enormous demographic range for analysis.
* Boomers have more living parents than any previous middle-aged population in history.
* And boomers have the benefit of the longevity revolution in science, technology and social organization.

I’m sure ABO readers can think of a few other incontrovertible and consequential facts. In the meantime, though, I can assure Mr. Ydstie that 62 is the new 62. And that’s something worth celebrating: some aches and pains aside—not something to complain about.

By the way, for a well-balanced treatment of Social Security, see “Fears of Social Security’s Collapse Unfounded, Experts Say,” by BOB MOOS in the Dallas Morning News (Dec. 11, 2007).
Reprinted with permission from Age Beat Online, e-news of the Journalists Exchange on Aging, www.asaging.org/agebeat, copyright JEOA 2007

Posted by Kavan Peterson on January 7, 2008 1:24 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

TGB Rock's this Week in Elder News

New must-read feature by Ronni Bennett at TGB:

[EDITORIAL NOTE: Today we inaugurate a new feature at TGB that will appear each Saturday - links to news items from the preceding week relating to elders and aging, along with whatever else catches my fancy that I think you might like to know about. Suggestions are welcome.]

Catch-up here -- This Week in Elder News.

Posted by Kavan Peterson on January 7, 2008 3:55 PM |Permalink |Comments (1)

January 15, 2008

Courts Run Amok

This should be Banned in Boson

Dawn Cromwell dares not leave her building. If she tried, a device girding her ankle would sound an alarm. For over a year, she has had to use store-bought reading glasses because her pleas for a prescription pair have gone for naught. She is given medications, but, she says, no one will tell her what they are. more stories like this
For 20 months now, Cromwell's life has been defined by a 10.5-by-12.5-foot living space at North End Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. In her tiny closet, there are virtually no clothes, and she has no idea what's become of the cherished possessions in the Boylston Street apartment where she lived for years.

At 73, Cromwell is one of hundreds of forgotten docket numbers in Massachusetts probate and family courts, where judges routinely fast-track infirm elders into the care of guardians, often with little evidence to justify such wrenching decisions.

Cromwell, after a broken ankle and a brief rehab in early 2006, had expected to go home. But on the say-so from the nursing home's doctor - a short, nearly illegible diagnosis - a judge decreed that Cromwell was mentally ill and handed all of her decision-making to a guardian. Cromwell lost all power over her own life, with no opportunity to object, no right to have a lawyer represent her, no chance to even be in the courtroom.

Three months later, the same judge, E. Chouteau Merrill, made the guardianship permanent - in a two-minute hearing in which the judge asked not a single question.

"You think living in America is just great, but you never anticipate something like this," Cromwell said. "It's just been a disaster for me. If I was robbed on the street and everything taken, I wouldn't be as upset as I am now."

This is a failure of our culture.

Posted by Dr. Bill Thomas on January 15, 2008 4:07 PM |Permalink |Comments (0)

January 16, 2008

Elders – Boon or Burden?

[Guest post by Kavan from UMBC]

In my years tracking state government news as a reporter for Stateline.org, I saw a lot of doom and gloom stories like this gem from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Study: Aging Ohioans putting strain on economy
COLUMBUS -- Ohio's aging population is going to put a backbreaking strain on the state's economy, property-tax base, health-care and retirement systems starting in 2012, according to a study released last week.

“Backbreaking”? Sounds like Ohio has a pretty serious problem… OLD PEOPLE… here are the numbers:

Today, Ohio experiences a daily net increase of 14 people age 65 or older. By 2012, that number grows to 119 new retirees per day.

The publisher of the report goes on to call Ohio’s aging population a ”disaster for state and local budgets, with no obvious solution.”

Well, that’s one way to look at our elder-rich future. And I won’t argue with the numbers. For the first time ever in a handful of states, healthcare is supplanting education as the largest chunk of the budget. And we know most healthcare spending goes towards caring for people in the final years or months of their lives. Nationally, America's official debt is over $9 trillion, and our primary social safety nets for older adults -- Social Security and Medicare -- face unfunded liabilities upwards of $40.9 trillion. Locally, nationally and globally, we face some pretty significant public policy challenges in terms of adapting to our rapidly expanding population of elders. Duh. Nobody is arguing with that.

But that is no excuse for the hysterical tenor of most news coverage about the "Silver Tsunamai" waiting to wipe out our economic future. I don't care how scary the demographic projections are, there is no excuse for painting the entire over-65-demographic as a bunch of freeloading leeches poised to suck our economy dry.

In fact, some folks are making a case that there is actual VALUE -- social, economic, spiritual, etc. -- to be gained by welcoming elders with open arms.

Take Colorado for instance -- Boomers blogger Brent Green explains here:

Our state is going to beat your state.
What I mean by this is simply a promise that Colorado will be doggedly persistent in transforming the aging of the Boomer generation into a strategic focus and an economic opportunity. Many states are talking about it; few are taking substantive action.
[snip]
After two years of planning and gener