Part XIll The Metamorphoses of the Baby Boom into the Senior Stampede

  A Bold but Sensible Proposal! Part 2 of 2 parts

Those of us in the World of Progressive Dementia provide the perfect template comprising the group, the need and the service required. We as a group are growing into an increasing state of vulnerability, of having needs that we cannot ourselves provide, all as our condition worsens.

A great number of us can take care of ourselves with a reduced need of caretaker help. 

But as time passes our needs for care grow. In the same way the number of us grows. More people are aging into the area of risk in which the number with the disease increases exponentially both with number and need.

This alone is further exacerbated as the Baby Boomer population is reaching the same area of risk as they come into their seniority. I call it the “Senior Stampede.”

Currently the cost of any kind of institutional or hired care is prohibitive. There is no Government Aid available for the greater number of us who do not qualify for Medicaid, the only available program of Government Aid. We have more than the government sets as poverty level and qualification.

The easiest way to overcome this is to give it away. This is called “Spending Down.” If you dispose of your assets so all you have left is a sum that does not exceed the poverty level you can still qualify so long as you meet other Government requirements that limit your opportunity to spend down. These are rules like the 5 year look back the government makes. Anything disposed of in the last 5 years before look back is still considered yours for determining the extant of your assets for calculating whether or not you have reached the poverty level.

Another drawback is this: Should we pay down or give our property away to get down to the financially qualifying level our spouses become at risk. If their funds are separate and not already paid down too, they must pay for your keep until they too are paid down to the poverty level.

The sardonic twist of this: Once paid down the spouse qualifies to go nowhere. Unless she/he is sick and in need of care, the only place for them to go is in the street.

One of the few alternatives left us is the subject of this and the last post to this Blog: A Bold but Sensible Proposal.

We must start over at the ground level. We did this very same thing with the postwar WWII period. Starting over we could manage this vast change that has occurred and do so with greater economy. We could avoid paying the confiscatory rates presently imposed for care.

We could do this by using the “in and paid for” infrastructure that now exists in the suburbs. This infrastructure is looking for another use. It no longer has the legions of children to care for. They are grown and have left the “burbs” leaving them to their senior parents.

If we converted this infrastructure to care for the seniors still living in the “burbs” we could make good use of this “in and paid for” foundational framework. With it we could service the needy in part by those of the community yet able to provide their own care. This in turn would provide them employment at a local level and act to enhance their quality of life.

After WWII whether it was by accident or design, we as a country made phenomenal investment in building the Interstate Highway System. This changed the character of the country more than any other improvement or capital expenditure ever did. It produced greater innovation than the steam engine, the railroads, the entire post-revolutionary Westward Expansion.

The foresight of it was mind boggling though not above criticism. It was waiting for Wilson the former CEO of General Motors, who as Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense built the Interstate System under the guise of National Defense.

More than any aid it might have given our National Defense Posture it gave a use for the auto returned to mass production in Detroit. Soon with all families aboard these cars, obsolescent as they were, families could be seen cavorting all over the Interstate System.

The Interstate spawned Dairy Queen, Howard Johnson’s, McDonalds, Holiday Inns and similar business enterprise throughout the System. Suburban sprawl herniated around the many junctions of it. So many innovations engulfed society in these heady ‘50’s that they capped and cut off that part of the depression cycle which would normally follow a war. Instead of recessing after the war it allowed us to take advantage of the economic growth produced by WWII and insulated us from any second economic dip typically occurring after a war.

Our world changed from a series of centers to an amalgamation of sprawl.

From this change the economy prospered over a period having no equal in history. Whether it enhanced a demographic of young working growing families or was the result of the growth and change gets somewhat confused in its sorting. What is true is that all of this churning produced our overall growth in personal worth and ability to do more for our quality of life and pay for more services to further enhance that.

We are at another such watershed time. We have crested; we have reached the point the pool can no longer contain us. Like water at a watershed it’s ours to choose the direction the water drains from this level. After the war the powers chose further investment as going into postwar retrenchment. As a result we prospered and our changed cultural demographic was served.

We are at the same decision point and via the last election it would seem we have opted to retrench after the profits were taken from the fiscal holiday of the last 30 years.

We can opt to renovate the infrastructure with the same postwar passion we saw in the ‘50’s. To do so would revitalize us economically. Better yet it could produce the economic cost saving of working with existing infrastructure renovating that to serve the population now in its service boundaries.