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

I am posting a newspaper article in its entirety because it is on the mark. The last 10 posting have been on the need for change to deal with the Senior Stampede into Dementia. This article I have posted takes a direction to deal with the problem as whine about it. 

A PROPOSAL FOR LOCAL INITIATIVE TO PROVIDE SENIOR SERVICES IN THE SUBURBS

The suburbs are showing their age

 By DAVID PETERSON, Star Tribune

September 21, 2010

It's what he doesn't hear in church that tells Tom Egan his suburb is changing.

What happened to all the noise? The crying babies, the toddlers wriggling free from the pew? Why is everything so staid and so hushed nowadays? Where are the children?

"It gives you a little pause for concern when your community is aging like that," the former mayor of Eagan said quietly one afternoon at Applebee's, fingering his water glass. "It really does."

Recent as its growth still seems, Eagan already is turning gray. Its once-jammed classrooms have lost more than 1,000 students. Its population is sagging. Admissions to Cascade Bay, its water park, have dropped by more than 70,000 a summer. Rounds of mini-golf are down by almost 50 percent in just three years.

The graying of Eagan -- and that whole halo of '80s and '90s suburbs that Minnesotans persist in thinking of as "young" -- is one more sign of the age wave that is about to sweep over Minnesota, and it is creating quiet fissures within every institution they contain, from rec centers to real estate offices. A world with many fewer kids and many more grandparents is a world these places have never known and for which they are ill-suited.

"The future stretches before us as very different from the decade we just left, and almost a lifetime away from the previous decade, or really the past 30 to 40 years," said demographer Hazel Reinhardt. "We old people are going to multiply and take over the earth."

Time is short, planners tell local leaders. Denial can be fatal. "By the time everyone in the pews seems to be 70 years old, and you're down to two kids in your third-grade Sunday School class, and the very few young parents are starting to think: 'What are we doing here?' it's pretty tough to turn things around," said Cindy Gregorson, director of congregational development for the United Methodist Church.

The aging pattern started some years ago in big cities, spread to the Brooklyn Centers of the inner ring, then to the Bloomingtons, and is now creeping into Eden Prairie and a host of other places that still have that new-suburb smell.

Some of the most acute tensions will arise in cities that invested a fortune in fancy public facilities for kids -- and now find the demand dwindling.

Take Apple Valley and its aquatics center.

"It's expensive to maintain and operate," said parks and rec chief Randy Johnson. "Trained staff, chemicals, lifeguards -- it takes a lot of money.''

After opening 10 years ago, the center grew steadily for five years, then leveled off. A portion of a $14 million parks referendum went into a "lazy river'' and two slides to jump-start attendance, much as Valleyfair updates each year.

"But last year,'' Johnson said, "was probably the lowest attendance in five or six years. We think it's weather." But the city is also rowing against a demographic current: "Each class in our schools has been smaller now for quite a while."

Prior Lake is asking similar questions about parks. In the go-go development years, its store of parkland exploded, from 569 acres to nearly 1,000. But how many years do kids play on swings?

"Each new development tends to get a park," said Mayor Mike Myser. "But no one looks at it as a whole. We want to totally review our parks plan, as a matter of demographics and economics. Some parks could just be green space."

An aging population can also create expensive new demands. In suburbs as unlikely as Apple Valley, Savage and Lakeville, older residents have gotten or are asking for costly new facilities. "The senior population is growing in Shakopee," 70-year-old Tom Schaff told members of the city council not long ago. "We need places to go, things to do!''

In Savage, one of the youngest cities of its size in the nation, a citizen survey found greater support for a senior center (66 percent) than for an ice arena (54 percent). "We're not old yet," said Mayor Janet Williams, 70. "But it'll come."

To be sure, an aging population has its advantages.

In Dakota County, juvenile crime is plummeting: Felonies peaked in 2001 and have dropped by 55 percent. Economic development is getting a boost from facilities that cater to the health needs of an aging population. New chain drug stores are being flung across the suburban landscape at the rate of one every 30 days.

Some of the benefits are social, as communities benefit from an army of shrewd retirees and able volunteers. In Shakopee a group of white-hairs gathers weekly around the fireplace at Panera Bread for "Trivia Tuesday," asking one another questions like, "Who said, 'It's not true I don't have anything on, I have the radio on?' "In Eden Prairie the parlor of the historic Smith Douglas More House rings with the laughter of seniors who pack a long table with their mugs of Dunn Bros. coffee.

For institutions that are willing to adapt, the demographic wave creates opportunities. Just ask Lee Ehmke, director of the Minnesota Zoo. Smelling change, he's up-aging the zoo from a place for kiddies and Cokes in a mall-like food court to a place that also offers wine tastings. Last year he added "Brew at the Zoo.''

But problems there will be.

Transportation woes

Suburbs thrown up in recent decades were created for people in cars, yet many of their

residents are now reaching an age where they will be dangerous behind the wheel.

That one truth carries immense implications. Suburbanites often wondered why Minnesota was spending so much money to subsidize light-rail transit when they needed new highway lanes. Now they can brace for this: The subsidy for the costliest form of public transit -- collecting seniors in cul-de-sac suburbs one by one -- is more than 10 times higher, per passenger, than the subsidy for the Hiawatha Line.

Already that trend is leading to severe tensions. The Metropolitan Council, whose demographics arm makes it one of the quickest to understand the implications of these trends, has taken the region's patchwork dial-a-ride system and given it a violent shake.

Some folks gained service; others lost. In Dakota County alone, residents at 18 of 23 senior housing facilities have been told to stop calling dial-a-ride unless they have a certified disability -- and climb on a regular bus instead.

If transportation looms as the No. 1 challenge for local governments, for the average suburbanite it may well be the value of a home.

The League of Cities is warning that the population of childless couples and singletons will grow 30 times faster in coming years than households with married couples and children.

"Will we have a surplus of McMansions?" demographer Reinhardt asked a lunchtime audience of homebuilders in Roseville this past spring, peering over her reading glasses as if to brace for pushback.

Instead someone shouted, "We already do, don't we?"

Already cities and counties are feeling the effects. In Eden Prairie alone, property values dropped by more than $1 billion over the last two years. Across Hennepin County, the estimated market value of homes plunged by $13 billion between 2007 and 2010.

To be sure, the two most quintessentially '80s and '90s suburban counties -- Woodbury's Washington and Lakeville's Dakota -- are neither poor nor heavily taxed compared to their peers. Roughly a third of their households make more than $100,000 a year -- half-again higher than the state average. But the outer suburbs are also facing the reality that the foundation of their growth -- their appeal to families with children -- is dwindling. That means money will be tight.

"The Met Council still has us growing ad infinitum," said Myser, Prior Lake's mayor. "But that clearly isn't the reality any more. We need to re-evaluate where we're going to be in 20 years."

Perhaps the toughest challenge of all: the psychic adjustment of grasping that young communities are not as young as they once were.

"I was a member of the St. Croix Valley business and professional women's group," said Yvonne Klinnert, the former editor of the Stillwater Courier, "and our last meeting was in May. It went defunct.''

Since then, Klinnert has attended a few meetings of the American Association of University Women of the St. Croix Valley.

"They're not on the precipice of closing,'' Klinnert said. ''But I'm 51, and I think I'm the youngest one there."

David Peterson • 952-882-9023

© 2010 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

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

22. The New Moral Frontier: WE DO FOR ONE ANOTHER!

Before going into specifics of "What t0 Do" I want to reiterate more reason for doing so. This is Chapter 22 from my book HOPE: A Working Primer of Care For ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE (click title to go to book) This Chapter Supplements the last post 24. Suburbs are Ripe for Change Part 1:

The last post in this series was: It is Time for a Radical Paradigm Shift Seeking Economy in Care. This post is a continuation of my thoughts and premises about the direction the shift has to take.

We have experienced a slow drift in our culture and economy to a polarization of those having the assets and those who have not. At one time there was more of a balance in our society that led from the Great Depression, WWII, and the recovery that followed that war. There was a great deal of equalization in the ownership of assets; there were fewer “have nots.” Owning your home with a car in your garage coupled with disposable income with which to use the car and otherwise seek the good life became an achievable goal.

Then it shifted again just like a pendulum. We went back to what was. We are there now. It is slowly becoming painfully obvious. Those of us afflicted with Dementia face our future with significant difficulty because of this drift. Seen from our eyes we must deal with the following challenges:

·       The cost of care exceeds realistic affordable levels. This makes it impossible for too many of us when professional care becomes an absolute need and our personal assets are insufficient to absorb this cost. Too many of us are faced with paying this confiscatory cost until we are paid down to the poverty level. When we reach that level we then will qualify for aid from the government.

·       This factor complicated by runaway cost is a new equalizer. It doesn’t equalize between the have and the have nots; it equalizes the middle class and the poverty level, putting them all at poverty level.

·       This equalization doesn’t touch the rich. Their assets are secure; their assets are able to absorb the cost. Their assets are then increased even further by the tax cuts.

·       All levels of Government are bordering on insolvency.

·       We hear “pay down the deficit”, “starve the beast”, “cut-back” from the same politicians who gave us deregulation of the financial markets, who brought us War in Iraq without conscription and tax increase to pay the fare. In 2000 one president stepped out of office leaving a surplus only to have that surplus turned into an alarming deficit in eight years. This deficit was then capped in 2008, the eighth year of the deficit, with the bust of the bubble of the false economy that came to be in the absence of deregulation.

·       This leaves Washington faced with two wars to wind down and get out of, an economy in the emergency room needing critical care and re-regulation of the de-regulation.

·       It is this same anomaly coupled with the decrease in local tax payment resulting from the economy stripped of its worth that has de-funded all of the grant-in-aid and similar programs of federal support for the operation of local government. This leaves local government unable to do what the Federal Government won’t do and the local governments also bordering on insolvency.

·       Medicaid is the federally funded program given the states to provide Health Care to that group it defines as the poverty level of our society. This level in 2006, when I was diagnosed, in Minnesota, amounted to ownership of no more assets between a husband and wife than approximately $103,000, a homestead, one car and a few other not particularly significant assets .

·       Medicaid is subject to the local control of the states administering it. The current cut back cry is producing an almost unanimous trend of reduction of benefits in most states, some states severely doing so.

·       Between the cut back trend, the insolvency of state and local government, and all the opposition to anything characterized as welfare, it is doubtful Medicaid will survive.

·       It is equally doubtful that government will produce any other aid for people faced with the high healthcare costs of AD.

·       The space between the rock and a hard place is swiftly narrowing with us squeezed in between. This is as it relates to help for the necessary care of Dementia. The government is closing out its programs; the entrepreneurial fever has captured institutional care; it is pushing cost higher and higher the reason for which is to secure profit and more profit for the investors and the salaried and commissioned folks at the top of this giant pyramid. 

·       67% of Nursing Homes are owned by private for profit owners. They tend towards the Big Box style of operation the funding of which frontloads the development cost in a profligate sort of way. So much of the investment base is drawn out in a variety of costs charged it by the developers that causes a deficit when it comes to hiring help and providing services. This is what keeps the costs high and the services insufficient.

·       All of the cost is ultimately borne by the person using the service.

We Need To Re-Invent This Wheel:

The re-invention needs to come from the bottom up. It needs this because there is no other source able to provide this. By bottom up I mean local, us, me and the rest of us. It comes to us to help one another. 

Competing no longer works. After 500 years the “Survival of the Fittest” has become the “Survival of the Special.”

In my next blog post I will start reviewing models that might reduce cost and provide better service.

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

In my book HOPE - A Working Primer of Care For DEMENTIA,  found by clicking of the foregoing title which is in hypertext, I have presented a series of essays about how we care for the afflicted at a local level, hopefully at a tolerable cost that all levels obliged to pay it can afford to pay it. This is the first essay which appears as Chapter 24 in the book.  

24. Suburbs are Ripe for Change Part 1:

This post will be followed by three more, first a newspaper article which appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Its title is Suburbs are showing their age. Taking off on the context of this article is two posts made by me in the past worth repeating in the context of the series I am now writing. They are entitled: A Bold but Sensible Proposal! Parts 1 and 2.

These comprise material on the first of a number of proposals I will make to act at a local level, grass roots if you will to rejuvenate service for treatment of Dementia.

This first article deals with the capability of local government to remedy many of the faults in the manner and form care has taken. It deserves serious attention.

As you read be mindful of this: Local government is as broke as all other levels of government. In a perfect world it is in no position to take this remedial action on. The trouble with this admonition is that every other level of government is in the same condition. If we choose not to act our economy cannot survive what is soon to come. The Silver Tsunami will engulf us killing all economies now in existence.

Local Government has the power and the authority to act. It can’t afford to do it, but, with the power it has, it can find ways of doing it that don’t drain their economies. We need to take the initiative out of Washington.

We need to do this for two reasons.

1.    Washington is gridlocked; it will not undertake anything more financially.

2.    Washington’s decision making capability has been kidnapped.

Corporations rule the day in Washington receiving more and more favorable legislation enhancing their ability to turn a profit. Parts of the profits are returned to the favorable legislators through the thriving lobby industry. Together Corporations and Washington politicians have become a self-actualizing segment of our society serving only itself.

WHAT TO DO? Consider what follows:

Part 1:

A municipal bond written on the security of the revenue coming from a public improvement in a municipality is readily negotiable on the bond market. The foregoing is lawyer talk not meant to be understood. What I describe is called a revenue bond. It is written by a unit of local Government and sold for money. It is a promissory note with oomph.

As a bond it makes a pledge by the maker of the bond to the holder (namely the person who owns the bond) It states it will repay the holder the amount of money paid for it at a specified time. It also promises to pay an amount as interest for the use of the sum paid to buy the bond, paid in installments or all at once at the time of repayment of the principal. To assure the holder that this money will be paid the bond states and the maker promises it will commit the revenue from the improvement for which it is written will first be paid to the principal repayments and the accrued interest before any other use is made for the funds coming in by reason of the improvement.

The revenue can come from anything, most often revenue from whatever improvement the bond was written for is pledged. Often earnings of the improvement are committed.

What is called a tax increment bond can be written that will assure the additional real estate tax paid because of the improvement to the real estate. It pledges the additional tax will be paid in repayment of the bond by the unit of government receiving the increased payment of real estate tax. There is any number of ways to find revenue to commit.

The unit of government making the bond can also write a General Obligation Bond. This pledges payment of interest and retirement of the debt with the all of the assets of the unit of government and the power of its taxing authority.

Most levels of local government and groups of government working together can do the same thing with bonding

The interest paid for these bonds are tax free as interest income to the holder federally and in many instance if issued by a unit in the domicile state of the holder, they are tax free from the state. This can make investment in such bonds quite favorable.

The foregoing was a part of the Urban Renewal tools used in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. It was a period in which the Federal Government enticed local government to create Housing and Urban Renewal Commissions and through them spend money to make money earmarked to renewing dilapidated real estate in their respective communities.

The pitch was to save downtowns, revitalize industrial and commercial areas, build what is now called Section 8 housing and many other projects of improvement. Some of the projects were quite successful, others questionably so. In spite of the success of any one project the sum of all the projects created financial, construction and myriad other activities and jobs for the people in the locality of the improvements. This in turn gave the regional and national economy a needed infusion of economic growth.

This all occurred in those heady days of post new-deal politics which came to a screeching halt in 1980 with the ascendency of the conservatives in the government in our country.

It is time now, 30 years later, to look for ways of doing some type of infusion into the economy of our country. We are seeing a start of it with the public improvement programs that are working their way out of Washington and into our communities.

The needs of a large segment of our people can generate actions to satisfy these needs. One such need is that of seniors for affordable services in the areas in which they live. They are living in the suburbs many having been the young families with children who moved there to raise their children.

This has changed the demography of many suburbs from that of mostly young families to that of mostly older families.  This change has resulted in population decline. Without the children less people are living in the suburbs. They are moving back to the core of the city where services are more conveniently accessed and they are not so alone.

For those who remain, who have not moved back there is nothing to keep them from moving. There is so little convenience for them in decentralized shopping areas, lack of organized public transit. Many don’t drive. There are many schools that no longer have a use, the children have grown up and left without remaining there and raising other children to utilize the many services available through the infrastructure in place. 

Schools, recreational parks, ball parks, ice arenas and the many other facilities that have been built in these areas to serve the children are deteriorating having no use any longer. Congregations in Churches and Synagogues are waning as are the use of many different facilities for active young adults. There is just too much infrastructure designed for younger people’s use and little amenable to the use by seniors.

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

Is it Time for a Radical Paradigm Shift Seeking Economy in Care?

I have posted two articles in my archive. They are: 

1. Rogoff: Is capitalism sustainable?
2. Three seeds for America's future economic boom

They continue the discussion of the last post subtitled:

EXPECT TO BECOME POORER!

This post questions the very foundation of our economic system. Something is going very wrong in our country. Most of us can no longer afford to live here. The cost of care looked at through the prism of Dementia accentuates this fact. It isn't as though there is a shortage of capital sufficient to sustain all of us. It is a distribution that gives so much to 1% of our populace leaving the balance of 99% high and dry. Capitalism was not intended to give more to one group and little to another group. Certainly 1% vs 99% was not part of the plan that suggested each person competing with the next would keep each in check. Something happened on the way to the bank that is not been good for most of us.

If this problem is left unattended it will destroy us. The Senior Stampede is bringing the risk of destruction to a head. Should we do something about it or keep our heads firmly buried in the sand like a herd of Ostriches? 

Historically, deep down historically, back 500 years as source, our culture has followed the rule of “Survival of the Fittest. This rule was based on the absolute right of man to compete one with another. It was believed that all men competing with one another would hold each other in check denying any one the advantage over another. Reliance on this automatic checkmate would secure for each man in the society the greatest return on his efforts. They called it capitalism.

Is this bold way still effective today? Whether or not we want to admit it:

•      It is no longer protecting us;
•       It is impairing and limiting all of us.
•      That it limits all of us but for the rich who are accumulating more wealth.
•     It is this accumulation by a specific few that is bringing the rest of us down.
•     The rule of the survival of the fittest now exists for the benefit of a select few.
•      It can be argued this has made the rule ineffectual.

We are entering an age that needs a new rule to follow. We need to put aside a belief that balance, fairness and good will come from getting “one up” on the guy next to you trusting the fairness of that. Fairness, equity in life, now need a new doctrine. That new doctrine calls on us to help one another. We take that guy next to us and instead of trying to be ahead, to be “one up,” we ask him: “What can I do to help, what can I do for you?”

What is capitalism as we know it in the U.S. doing for us? Unless you’re among the favored rich, it is not doing one thing. We are losing our income, purchasing power, savings and retirement every step we take. Prices keep going up and nothing seems to quell the onslaught of cost of living, particularly in Drug, Health Care and Health Insurance Costs.

If the cost doesn’t get you, and I do not know how it won’t, the financial crash of ‘08 or the two before that, the dot.com Crisis or the crash that followed 9-11-01, probably did.

All three of these crashes had their foundation in deregulation, risky and shoddy investments by Wall Street and the disregard shown by the financial industry for those it is supposed to serve, namely, us.

It is in the aftermath, in this toxic climate those of us affected by Dementia are forced to look at Professional and Long Term Health Care. Its cost is unreasonably expensive, prohibitively so, and confiscatory of the life savings of the people faced with paying it.

It is the middle class this hits like a runaway train. The rich have the disposable income for it, the poor have Medicaid, however long that program lasts. The rest of us have whatever we saved, whatever we have for retirement, not protected by the few protected pension funds that have existed and survive the cutbacks the employers and backers are now making of them.

It is the middle class that pays for it. It is the joint obligation of both the husband and wife. It is their obligation if one of them needs In-Home Professional Care, Assisted Living Care or Nursing Home Care. When the spouses funds are paid down to the level of qualification for Medicaid, if Medicaid then continues to exist, Government, if it is still solvent, will pick up the cost.

This is wonderful until you start thinking of the other spouse who is left with little or nothing to live on.

Dementia will not go away. Ultimately most of us will need In-Home Professional Care, Assisted Living or Nursing Home Care. The first way to insulate us from the cost is to work whatever programs available while in the Early Stage of Dementia to prolong that Early Stage.

Prolonging Early stage produces saving on the Cost of Care all the way around. It also enhances the quality of life of the one afflicted and the affected around him/her.

We need to find Economy in the Cost of Care when it comes time for In-Home Professional Care, Assisted Living or Nursing Home Care. The current way of doing it is far too costly. We must look for and put together a less expensive way of doing it.

Currently 65% of the Assisted Living and Nursing Home Care facilities are owned by for-profit Corporations. For supposed economy they are built large, services are made uniform; one model fits all, what I like to call homogenization. They are Big Box, too many are the profit making creatures of Wall Street, too often sold with subsidy obtained by lobbyists working government.

Once formulated they are then commission sold, marketed as investment packages and marketed as investment throughout the county. They have financial aid in place to build large and expensive infrastructure for which fees are paid lawyers, salaries, commissions or cuts to building contractors, organizers, building and management consultants, land acquisition that turns profit in a variety of ways, all of which is absorbed in the cost of acquisition and as development fees.

All of the money is leveraged in by the speculators forming each system. That money is borrowed by the speculators, taken as investments in marketable chits of one kind or another, or received as subsidy from government. It is a much longer list but starts with the above.

Each step of income is accompanied by a step of outgo as salaries, fees, commissions, and a whole variety of vehicles used as return to the organizers and developers. The repayment of all of this is leveraged down to the ultimate operator and people served.

The people served are us.

The end result of this leaves the operator short of money after payment for services for operation and providing the services paid for. The fees for service are high, the return on the high fees paid for service are negligible. 

It comes down to this proposition. We can’t afford to pay the going rate. If we do, too much of the percentage of what we pay goes to payment of return on investment and not to operation and service.

This is the reason we need to re-invent this wheel. It is this that needs a new design. I will in subsequent posts discuss ways that might be considered.

The field of Long Term Health Care readily evidences the fault of capitalism let loose to run wild. There is just too much profit for too little service. We need to devise a way to help one another as make a profit off one another.

The balance is gone that once protected everyone in our capitalistic system. The system has been rigged where one segment has the advantage over all the other segments. We are not protected from the imbalance of the system according the rich the ability to take more at our expense.

It is done at the expense of helping one another that is not now being done.

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

EXPECT TO BECOME POORER!

That truth is self-evident! Expect to become poorer if we allow this to continue! Our history is predicated on self-evident truths as stated in the Declaration of Independence, stated by our founders as the first reason giving cause to separate from England’s Rule:

July 4, 1776

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The context of the article entitled Why middle class has taken a big hit recites the unfortunate turn of events that has resulted from the past 20 to 30 years of exploitation by a few of the many in this country under the guise of due process and government.

Before addressing the right of this tiny percentage (1%) to “do it” to the massive percentage of our population, the less fortunate (99%), let us first look at the end product of what has occurred. It is that product addressed in Why middle class has taken a big hit It can be read on my archive; just click on it to go there.

We have been exploited, duped into believing it has been kindly done for our benefit and progress. The short run might be hard but the trickle down effect will in the long run deliver us as to greater wealth. This is the reason so many of us go on supporting the faction that brought this about.

Our current state of affairs must have every populist in our history rolling in the grave. Each time our society reached a balance economically fair to all of us, the purveyors of “purpose” using that blessed word “purpose” as their veil behind which they hide from view for fear they be seen as they truly are. They are truly Predators seeking Profit any way they can. With government which they control by their dollars they are doing this at the expense of many for the good of the very few.

This has happened before, many times in our history as a nation; it is happening again. We are obviously not yet at the stage of total socio-economic devastation to cause us to pay attention to our exploitation. We seem to still yearn to become part of the small percentage of rich rich so we keep on struggling with what we don’t have. How much more do we need to take before we put our act together and our power by “Majority’s Rule”

The foregoing is not the purpose of this essay, although it refers to facts so evidently true. It refers to the foundation for us to turn a corner and start looking out for ourselves.

It is our mandate, our constitutional foundation, to do something about this! Did you know many wanted to write into the Declaration of Independence “Self-Evident” clause: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Property.” The use of the word property was more consistent with the wording first purveyed by John Locke a late 17^th Century Doctor and Philosopher making the philosophical argument that Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is protected as inviolate because it emanates from the natural law and not the law man could make and or change. It was Locke who coined the “self-evident” clause.

In the 17^th century there was still great adherence to the theories of natural law first elaborated on by Socrates and Aristotle, codified by Aquinas and many others. Natural Law was quite alive in the Enlightenment. It was at this time the Western man finally threw off the shackles of feudalism and became involved in securing his/her natural rights. It was the French Revolution that best exemplified this.

The language change was that of Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration. At the time he was the more liberal one as against John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Washington would probably have been on the Addams and Hamilton side but kept himself neutral to feed his monarchical sense. Jefferson held to his language, supported by later writings of Locke in which Pursuit of Happiness was construed to be a property protected by the Property Clause.

This tension can be seen in almost every aspect of the constitutional history of the U.S. The federalists wanted a strong central government controlled by as few as possible. Jefferson, then a republican, which was the liberal bunch, wanted a greater electoral franchise but not a right of general election.

There was no popular vote until Andy Jackson came aboard as president in 1829. Jackson brought a limited electoral franchise for the populace and this right has only expanded since his time.

If we are to look at our government arising from an absolute code that cannot be modified without forming a new constitution than the conservatives are positioned correctly to see that  little decision making is accorded to the masses. If however, the constitution is seen as a dynamic code that must be applied and re-applied as time and circumstances direct then the liberals are right. Government must treat with change as change necessarily occurs.

The argument that if too much is left to the masses to decide they will create chaos. Not sufficiently educated to exercise some order in their decision making they can only follow every shift in the wind. Where as the educated statesmen will exercise care and caution for the rights of all and see to the enforcement of the constitution and laws as they have been adopted.

  

This but brings us to the demoralization we currently face. The elite have had their chance and like Lucy holding the football, they “do it” all over again.

We have come to the point we were at after the exploitation by the Robber Barons who succeeded the Carpet Baggers and their kind. It took the happening of a Depression to wrest control from them.

It would appear that is the direction we are heading at this time.

What does this diatribe have to do with “The Metamorphoses of the Baby Boom into the Senior Stampede?”

It is this:

The current desperate state of our political economic system has been stretched beyond any ability to do anything about the calamity building with the baby boomers hitting age 65 and becoming demented in higher numbers commensurate with that general age population.

In our system the poor are covered by Medicaid for care. Those not in poverty are required to pay their own way.

That cost of “their own way” has increased to confiscatory levels. This causes retirement savings to empty out far before owners need for help does. This will put the spouse not in the care home but out on the street.

The home care costs are high because there are so many hands in the pot pulling out profit, too many times leaving too little to pay the help unless they jack up the price. There are no controls being exercised. 65% of Health Care Services are privately owned for profit operation, many if not most financed by Wall Street, Subsidized by Government.

Looking at the current cost of care, the accelerating numbers needing that care, there will not be enough for the government to pick of the slack and cover the cost.

What happens when this happens? The exploiters will have drained us dry. Do we start the poor house movement again? Sure we can bed them in our homes, if we have one after foreclosure, if one of us has a job to put food on the table.

It is not pretty!!! 

Part VI, The Metamorphoses of the Baby Boom into the Senior Stampede

Alzheimer's Disease: A Look at US and UK Expenditures to Treat this Unfortunate Ailment

This is the first of what I hope will be many guest contributions to this blog. This essay contributed by Nisha. Nisha reports she represents mha.org.uk  – a charity providing care and support services for older people in Britain, with care homes in Southampton, Glasgow, Leeds and many other locations.

I hope to have more of a biography about Nisha on her next post. I glean from the material sent me that she is a Health Care professional, as you note above she is associated with a multi-location care home group. Whether private or public or part of a health care system that is parts of both I have no idea.

Nisha’s interests dovetail well into the topic I have been perusing in my last series of posts, namely The Metamorphoses of the Baby Boom into the Senior Stampede. As Nisha represents in the following essay is that the UK and the US are two of the biggest spenders on the treatment and research into cures for Alzheimer's Disease. The U.S. Healthcare System Inefficiency Promotes Greater Costs and Higher Spending.

Her bottom line is the UK system is offering its afflicted greater economy in care. It is not facing the catastrophe of financial ruin as we are in the US. The ruin we face stems directly from the overwhelming numbers and the confiscatory costs the afflicted face in having this disease.

The UK does not face what we do with the Senior Stamped. The UK has the senior numbers and the stampede into their high risk age. They do not face the expense of the burgeoning costs we do in the US.

Alzheimer's Disease: A Look at US and UK Expenditures to Treat this Unfortunate Ailment

Alzheimer's Disease is one of the most common diseases among the world's elderly population and, despite valiant efforts and dedicated research, medical professionals and bioengineering scientists have still not found any viable way of curing the disease or reversing its effects on the world's aging population.

This inability to come up with a cure is not for lack of effort, of course, as the world economy has dedicated hundreds of billions of dollars to collectively research, experiment, and treat those with the disease over the past several decades. In particular, two countries have dedicated billions of dollars toward finding a cure, treating those with the disease, and ensuring that symptoms are mitigated or reduced as much as is currently possible given the current state of science as it concerns Alzheimer's Disease in general. The United States, as well as the United Kingdom, are two of the biggest spenders on the treatment and research into cures for Alzheimer's Disease.

U.S. Healthcare System Inefficiency Promotes Greater Costs and Higher Spending

The United States has always been a leader when it comes to dedicating funds toward treating and researching diseases, having led the way on things like cancer treatment research and looking into a cure for AIDS over the past thirty years. It dedicates much the same amount of researches and scientific development to the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease, especially because the country's Baby Boomer population is aging and the ranks of its senior citizens with the disease are swelling to record levels never before seen in that country. While United States research arms dedicate collectively more than $80 billion per year to research, the cost to the country's healthcare system is far greater indeed.

In 2010 alone, the United States healthcare system spent well more than $120 billion on Alzheimer's Disease treatments and patient care, a great deal more than was spent in the United Kingdom. This is not merely because the country's population is greater or because there are more incidences of the disease in the United States than there are across the pond. In fact, the per-capita spending on treatments and patient care relating to Alzheimer's Disease in the United States is more than twice that spent in the United Kingdom. The answers here are pretty obvious.

Despite all of its dedication to science and research as it pertains to this unfortunate disease, America does maintain one of the most costly, and least efficient, healthcare systems in the world. It's uncharacteristic for a country of this size and wealth to have such a system, but it's the reality that many Alzheimer's Disease patients suffer through for the entirety of their diagnosis. Treatment provided in the United States is virtually the same as that provided in the UK, but it simply costs more per capita.

United Kingdom Efficiency Promotes Lower Costs, Same Outlooks

The United Kingdom in 2009 spent just under $43 billion in U.S. dollars to deliver the same treatments and forms of patient care to its own citizens suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. That adds up to a far less per-capita cost for treatment, and actually stands as a testament to the country's healthcare system. Despite receiving criticism in some circles for its inefficiency, the truth is that the National Health Service has ably and capably helped mitigate the effects of Alzheimer's Disease in patients throughout the country using the National Health Service.

The country's health service does predict that the costs associated with Alzheimer's Disease treatment and management will rise over the next decade or so, especially as the Baby Boomer population in that country experiences the same hurdles associated with age that the American population will be experiencing concurrently. However, the estimated projection of increased costs in the UK is smaller per capita than it is in the United States, again promoting the efficiency of the country's centralized and unified National Health Service (relatively speaking) as compared to the much larger and decentralized system of treatment in the United States.

Overall, Two Very Attentive and Capable Countries for Alzheimer's Disease Treatment

Cost to treat Alzheimer's Disease in both countries should be considered a sidebar to the real innovations going on in the scientific community. While Alzheimer's Disease cannot be stopped or cured, it can be treated and the effects of the disease can be slowed down and mitigated to some extent, for a certain period of time. To that end, the spending on both sides of the Atlantic is well-intentioned, necessary, and furthering the overall goal of helping the increasing number of Alzheimer's Disease sufferers.

This article comes from Nisha representing mha.org.uk – a charity providing care and support services for older people in Britain, with care homes in Southampton, Glasgow, Leeds and many other locations.