In 1946, the year the first Baby Boomer was born, life expectancy was sixty-seven. So, what's the meaning of the extra twenty or thirty years we have attained since the first boomer's birth?
Life remains mortal and finite.
With all the recent longevity gains, aren't we just prolonging the human agony? A look at the life our parents are living in their last years can give us some clues as to what we boomers will be facing in our later years.
Today, two million parents of boomers are residents of the eighteen thousand nursing homes across the U.S. Two million out of a population of three hundred million may seem like a small number, but the nursing home experience will touch almost all. If you are a boomer approaching sixty-five, your lifetime chances of spending time in a nursing home are 43 percent. If not you, it could be your parents.
As you age, your chances increase. Only 12 percent of people between sixty-five and seventy-four are in nursing homes, compared to one-third of those between seventy-five and eighty-four. If you live to eighty-five, your chances are better than one in two.
Annually, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, we spend $1.5 trillion on health care in the U.S. About seven percent--$115 billion--is spent on nursing home care. Health care for the elderly is a mixed economy: private providers largely funded and regulated by the goverment. Medicare and Medicaid, the two big government insurance programs, pay for most nursing home care. That number represents only the basic costs, room and board. Billions more in government dollars go into drugs and services such as physical therapists.
The elderly--whether in nursing homes or not--are major consumers of the pharmaceutical industry's products. The average nursing home resident ingests about ten drugs a day--predominately gastrointestinal, analgesic, cardiovascular, and psychoactive. People over sixty-five spend $50 billion annually on prescription drugs, $5 billion of that coming from nursing homes--more than half paid for by the government. A 2001 survey by the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America uncovered 261 drugs in development for diseases of aging--Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, and arthritis. This is not to mention drugs for diseases of all ages--122 for heart disease and stroke, 402 for cancer.
Living in a nursing home is life interrupted. Your door is always open. Walking down the hall on a typical morning, peering through the open doors, you see that they're mostly lying in bed. A nurse pushes a cart down the hall. The top of the med cart is loaded with carefully counted medications. There are cups of water and tools to crush meds for the toothless or for those with swallowing problems. Orange juice or ginger ale is there for a chaser. Crushed meds are blended into applesauce.
These residents are members of The Greatest Generation.
Most people in nursing homes are in their eighties, born in the 1920s. Growing up in the Depression, they didn't share our boomer luxury of exorcising their psychic demons in psychotherapy. Food, clothing, shelter and staying alive were their childhood and youthful priorities, not looking for love and fulfillment. Graduating from grammar school--eight grade--was a mark of academic distinction. Later they got to escape the farm, factory or office to be warriors.
No matter how exciting or mundane their lives were in the past, they're now occupying hospital-style rooms--public spaces where they can't lock their doors and strangers come and go. Life is a succession of pokes and prods, medications, TV and bingo.
Life remains mortal and finite.
With all the recent longevity gains, aren't we just prolonging the human agony? A look at the life our parents are living in their last years can give us some clues as to what we boomers will be facing in our later years.
Today, two million parents of boomers are residents of the eighteen thousand nursing homes across the U.S. Two million out of a population of three hundred million may seem like a small number, but the nursing home experience will touch almost all. If you are a boomer approaching sixty-five, your lifetime chances of spending time in a nursing home are 43 percent. If not you, it could be your parents.
As you age, your chances increase. Only 12 percent of people between sixty-five and seventy-four are in nursing homes, compared to one-third of those between seventy-five and eighty-four. If you live to eighty-five, your chances are better than one in two.
Annually, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, we spend $1.5 trillion on health care in the U.S. About seven percent--$115 billion--is spent on nursing home care. Health care for the elderly is a mixed economy: private providers largely funded and regulated by the goverment. Medicare and Medicaid, the two big government insurance programs, pay for most nursing home care. That number represents only the basic costs, room and board. Billions more in government dollars go into drugs and services such as physical therapists.
Living in a nursing home is life interrupted. Your door is always open. Walking down the hall on a typical morning, peering through the open doors, you see that they're mostly lying in bed. A nurse pushes a cart down the hall. The top of the med cart is loaded with carefully counted medications. There are cups of water and tools to crush meds for the toothless or for those with swallowing problems. Orange juice or ginger ale is there for a chaser. Crushed meds are blended into applesauce.
These residents are members of The Greatest Generation.
Most people in nursing homes are in their eighties, born in the 1920s. Growing up in the Depression, they didn't share our boomer luxury of exorcising their psychic demons in psychotherapy. Food, clothing, shelter and staying alive were their childhood and youthful priorities, not looking for love and fulfillment. Graduating from grammar school--eight grade--was a mark of academic distinction. Later they got to escape the farm, factory or office to be warriors.
No matter how exciting or mundane their lives were in the past, they're now occupying hospital-style rooms--public spaces where they can't lock their doors and strangers come and go. Life is a succession of pokes and prods, medications, TV and bingo.