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The Rising Age Gap in Economic Well-Being; The Old Prospect Relative to the Young

By Richard Fry, D’Vera Cohn, Gretchen Livingston and Paul Taylor

OVERVIEW

Households headed by older adults have made dramatic gains relative to those headed by younger adults in their economic well-being over the past quarter of a century, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of a wide array of government data.

In 2009, households headed by adults ages 65 and older possessed 42% more median net worth (assets minus debt) than households headed by their same-aged counterparts had in 1984. During this same period, the wealth of households headed by younger adults moved in the opposite direction. In 2009, households headed by adults younger than 35 had 68% less wealth than households of their same-aged counterparts had in 1984.

As a result of these divergent trends, in 2009 the typical household headed by someone in the older age group had 47 times as much net wealth as the typical household headed by someone in the younger age group–$170,494 versus $3,662 (all figures expressed in 2010 dollars). Back in 1984, this had been a less lopsided ten-to-one ratio. In absolute terms, the oldest households in 1984 had median net wealth $108,936 higher than that of the youngest households. In 2009, the gap had widened to $166,832.

Housing has been the main driver of these divergent wealth trends. Rising home equity has been the linchpin of the higher wealth of older households in 2009 compared with their counterparts in 1984. Declining home equity has been one factor in the lower wealth held by young households in 2009 compared with their counterparts in 1984.

Trends over the same period in other key measures of economic well-being — including annual income, poverty, homeownership, and home equity — all follow a similar pattern of older adult households making larger gains, compared with households headed by their same-aged counterparts in earlier decades, than younger adult households, according to the Pew Research analysis.

These age-based divergences of households widened substantially with the housing market collapse of 2006, the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the ensuing jobless recovery. But they all began appearing decades earlier, suggesting they are as much linked to long-term demographic and social changes as they are to the sour economy of recent years.

November 8, 2011
Class Action Lawsuit Against HHS; Was It a Case of Misapplication of “Observation Status”?

The Center for Medicare Advocacy and co-counsel, the National Senior Citizen Law Center, filed a class action lawsuit against Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, on behalf of seven individual plaintiffs who represent a nationwide class of individuals harmed by an increasingly common practice. The plaintiffs are Medicare beneficiaries who received inpatient hospital services, but were improperly classified as outpatients, often referred to as “observation status,” and therefore deprived of Medicare Part A coverage for their hospital stay and after care. Bagnall vs. Sebelius, 3:11-cv-01703 (D. Conn. 11/3/2011).

The misapplication of “observation status” deprives Medicare beneficiaries of their coverage rights and may cause them to absorb significant hospital costs that otherwise would be paid for under Medicare Part A. Additionally, they may be forced to forego critical post-hospitalization skilled nursing facility (SNF) care or pay exorbitant out-of-pocket costs for it because Medicare requires a minimum of three consecutive days as a hospital inpatient to qualify for SNF care.

“We’ve turned to the courts for fairness because ‘observation status’ harms thousands of Americans receiving Medicare each year, nationwide,” said Judith Stein, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, one of the nation’s leading legal advocates for the more than 48 million older and disabled Americans enrolled in Medicare. “It causes severe financial problems for beneficiaries and their families, and deprives them of nursing home coverage altogether.”

“Worse yet, without advocates, Medicare recipients have virtually no way of challenging their denial of benefits,” said attorney Gill Deford, the Center for Medicare Advocacy’s Director of Litigation. “Without a class action lawsuit, it may be impossible to stop the government from misusing ‘observation status’ in the first place.”

“Throughout my sister’s hospital records the word ‘admitted’ or ‘admit’ was used. So we were shocked when we were advised that she was ‘observation only,’” stated Mrs. Shirley Burton, a plaintiff seeking justice for her late sister, Nettie Jean Sapp, of Temple Texas.

Plaintiff Lee Barrows of Connecticut described her husband’s five-day stay in a Connecticut hospital as an observation patient and denial of Medicare payment for his subsequent nursing care. “After five days of treatment in the hospital, my husband’s neurologist, physician and social worker ushered me into the hallway to tell me that my husband was never admitted. I was stunned with disbelief and tearfully blurted out that I would fight this,” said Mrs. Barrows. “His doctors then indicated that this happens once or twice a week.”

For more information about the class-action lawsuit, or to learn more about Observation Status or how to get involved in advocacy activities visit www.medicareadvocacy.org.

The Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc., established in 1986, is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides education, advocacy and legal assistance to help older people and people with disabilities obtain fair access to Medicare and necessary health care. The Center is based in Washington, DC and Connecticut with offices throughout the country.

November 7, 2011
Contraceptives Conscience Clause Subject of House Hearing

Women’s Policy, Inc’s* Weekly Highlight:

On November 2, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing, “Do New Health Law Mandates Threaten Conscience Rights and Access to Care?”

Chair Joe Pitts (R-PA) said, “On August 3, 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] issued an interim final rule that would require nearly all private health plans to cover contraception and sterilization as part of their preventive services for women. While the rule does include a religious exemption, many entities feel that it is inadequate and violates their conscience rights by forcing them to provide coverage for services for which they have a moral or ethical objection. The religious employer exemption allowed under the preventive services rule — at the discretion of the HRSA [Health Resources and Services Administration] — is very narrow. And the definition offers no conscience protection to individuals, schools, hospitals, or charities that hire or serve people of all faiths in their communities. It is ironic that the proponents of the health care law talked about the need to expand access to services, but the administration issues rules that could force providers to stop seeing patients because to do so could violate the core tenants of their religion.”

Full committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-CA)countered, “[T]his is not a hearing about abortion. This is not a hearing about whether people can adhere to their religious beliefs, follow their own individual consciences. This is a hearing about whether the Republicans can have the government intrude to the point where people who buy health insurance can be denied insurance coverage for the preventive service of family planning. Preventing conception is what family planning is all about, and it is a legitimate medical service. In fact, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) made recommendations to the Department [of Health and Human Services] for what would be covered under preventive services, and they recommended that this be a covered preventive service. So the question is, if somebody does [not] want to provide contraception, because it violates their religion or their conscience, would they be required to? Absolutely not. The question, then, comes down to what is the scope of the exception that church-provided insurance need not cover family planning?”

David Stevens, MD, MA, chief executive officer of the Christian Medical Association, said “The HHS interim final regulations would force insurance plans nationwide to cover ‘all Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.’ The contraception mandate does not exempt controversial drugs such as Ella and the ‘morning-after pill,’ which according to the FDA have post-fertilization effects that ‘may inhibit implantation’ of a living human embryo. That is an issue of weighty moral concern for many pro-life and faith-based health care professionals, individuals, and groups. The potential ‘religious exemption’ in the contraception mandate — exempting only a nano-sector of ‘religious employers’ from the guidelines — is meaningless to conscientiously objecting health care professionals, insurers and patients. The HHS rule implementing provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [P.L. 111-148] fits a pattern of this administration’s extremely narrow and limiting view of conscience rights. The HHS rule has the potential to negatively impact patients and health care professionals in the following ways: The contraception mandate can potentially trigger a decrease in access to health care by patients in medically underserved regions and populations … The contraception mandate further contributes to an increasingly hostile environment in which medical students, residents, and graduate physicians face discrimination, job loss, and ostracism for holding pro-life views on abortion, controversial contraceptives, and other ethical issues … The contraception mandate creates a climate of coercion that can prompt pro-life health care professionals to limit the scope of their medical practice and can discourage pro-life medical students and residents from choosing careers in family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and other specialties likely to involve conflicts of conscience … The contraception mandate can potentially cause a decrease in the provision of health insurance for employees of pro-life health care employers who want to avoid conflicts of conscience regarding the subsidy and implied endorsement of controversial contraceptives … The contraceptive mandate rule sweepingly tramples conscience rights, which have not only provided a foundation for American civil liberties but also a foundation for the ethical and professional practice of medicine.”

November 7, 2011
Expedition: The Coveted Bargain

by Roberta McReynolds

Tucked in the center of the Sunday newspaper is a fistful of sales inserts; bright colors printed on slick paper luring potential customers with baited hooks. The process of sorting through the pages reminds me of searching for the prize in a box of Cracker Jack. The treasure inevitably rests at the other end of the package with all the candy-coated peanuts.

I’ve developed a method to streamline my quest for that coveted bargain. First the actual newspaper is separated, then pared down to favorite sections and stacked near my husband’s chair. Next, my fingers deftly deal out the inserts in a fan pattern across the kitchen counter: food coupons, craft store bargains, three or four favorite department stores, and a large mound of rejects. This ritual is followed by coupon clipping and filing.

Once every two or three months I plan a major expedition for basic household supplies. My favorite hunting grounds are stores with a reputation for low-prices, generic brands, hordes of shoppers and narrow, cramped aisles. The bargains and coupons make the trip worthwhile, but the other ‘features’ are what tend to keep me away as long as possible. My battle cry is, “Buy in bulk and quantity!” I begin making my list as much as a month in advance by checking our supply of everything from toothpaste and vitamins, to cleaning supplies and paper products. The money I save on a package of 36 double-size rolls of bathroom tissue alone more than pays for the gasoline to drive out of my way to make these purchases.

Although my strategy habitually includes collecting coupons, most of them expire without ever being used because the generic brands are already far less expensive. When I manage to time my shopping to coincide with when the most expensive items on my list happen go on sale and I have discount coupon, too, I feel like I’ve scored the winning home run. I buy two or more of each item on my list, building a home inventory and postponing the next trip as far into the future as I can manage. Personal ‘research’ supports the notion that there isn’t a good time or day of the week to accomplish this chore; it’s always crowded. I’ve tried avoiding weekends, paydays, full moons, and lunch hours without success.

Comfortable walking shoes are a must. I opt to park away from the congested area near the front of the store. I lock the car door, take a moment to get my bearings and memorize landmarks in a parking lot designed to accommodate hundreds of cars. Why is it so many people with the same color car as mine always choose to shop on the same day? I make a mental note that I’m in the row of cars aligned with the pharmacy sign on the front of the building and one of the corrals to return empty shopping carts is directly east. My internal Global Positioning System locks the information in my brain and with a determined deep breath, I sling my purse strap over my shoulder and soldier forward on my mission.

Shoving my cart ahead of me with shopping list in hand, I imagine I’m a child on a scavenger hunt. How quickly can I mark off all the items and get them into the trunk of my car? “Penalty points for impulse shopping,” I caution myself when my attention drifts to a bright yellow clearance sign.

November 3, 2011
Pew Reports on The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election; Angry Silents, Disengaged Millennials

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press’ Survey Report:

OVERVIEW

In the last four national elections, generational differences have mattered more than they have in decades. According to the exit polls, younger people have voted substantially more Democratic than other age groups in each election since 2004, while older voters have cast more ballots for Republican candidates in each election since 2006.

The latest national polls suggest this pattern may well continue in 2012. Millennial generation voters are inclined to back Barack Obama for reelection by a wide margin in a matchup against Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who has run the strongest against Obama in many polls. By contrast, Silent generation voters are solidly behind Romney.

In between the youngest and the oldest voters are the Baby Boom generationand Generation X. Both groups are less supportive of Obama than they were in 2008 and are now on the fence with respect to a second term for the president.

One of the largest factors driving the current generation gap is the arrival of diverse and Democratic-oriented Millennials. Shaped by the politics and conditions of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies, this group holds liberal attitudes on most social and governmental issues.

In contrast, the Silent generation — whose members reached adulthood between the late 1940s and early 1960s and now make up over 80% of Americans age 65 and older – has held relatively conservative views on social issues and the role of government for most of their lives. Their growing unease, and even anger, about the direction of the country in recent years has moved them further toward the GOP, largely erasing the Democratic Party’s advantage in affiliation.

While the political divides between young and old are deep, there are potential fissures at both ends of the age spectrum. Millennials continue to support Obama at much higher levels than older generations. But Obama’s job ratings have fallen steeply among this group, as well as among older generations, since early 2009. Perhaps more ominously for Obama, Millennials are much less engaged in politics than they were at this stage in the 2008 campaign.

In contrast, Silents — particularly those who affiliate with or lean to the Republican Party — are far more engaged in the presidential campaign than they were at this point in the contest four years ago. While Silents support Romney over Obama by a wide margin, they express highly unfavorable views of both the GOP and the Democratic Party.

Silents prefer the Republican Party on most issues, with Social Security a notable exception. Silents are about evenly divided over whether the Democrats or the Republicans can better handle Social Security. If debate over Social Security and Medicare comes to the forefront, it raises potentially significant cross pressures for Silent generation voters, who rank Social Security among the top issues affecting their 2012 vote.

Growing racial and ethnic diversity, which is concentrated among younger generations, has benefited Democrats. Race and ethnicity are strongly associated with views about government, and in no small part account for some of the greater liberalism of the younger age groups and greater conservatism of older groups.

November 3, 2011
Where Has Joy Gone?

by Joan L. Cannon

I’ve been reading a Pulitzer Prize winner. Without Mr. P’s name on the cover, I’d have stopped after 30 pages. I persevered, and have come almost to the end. The characters that in the beginning made me grind my teeth have matured or died. From the beginning, the writing was vivid, original, attractive, but the situations and people in them made me want to drop them as quickly as I could. Even now, with only a few pages to go, and filled as I am with admiration for the creativity evident in
A Visit from the Goon Squad, I’m shaken.

I’m not a prude, and the Anglo Saxon epithets were realistic, suited to the mouths uttering them. I simply wondered why I should care about people who were not only crude (though sometimes sensitive), but self-absorbed and amoral. Their world seemed to offer nothing on its surface to suggest they might need to become observant, other-directed, or altruistic, but their lack of imagination on their own behalf astonished me as the material that had won such a prestigious prize. I think that was the point, and satire was evident, but I felt cheated by seeing nothing else for so long.

It got me thinking about fashion. We all know that it comes and goes. We all know it applies to a lot more in our lives than clothes. It appears to be omnipresent in either the persons or the perceived rankings of judges — of all the arts. Where (outside of that enclave known as “Inspirational”) are critics who are willing to look to the effects of their judgments on viewers and readers? What has happened to contemporary art? Why is the public so ready to immerse itself (if I may refer to it as a monolith for the sake of this argument) in the down sides of life?

Happiness is so often as easy as understanding Rabbi Schachtel’s aphorism: Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. It’s clear that nothing is quite that simple, but it’s also clear that too many young people, especially those who have almost everything they could ever want, are the most dissatisfied and depressed and at a loss in the whole population.

Even today there are plenty of anecdotes about triumph over adversity, and too few of humility and gratitude. It’s disheartening to see how much adult literature is devoted not just to showing the abstracted, drugged gyrations of musicians, actors, and those who look to the noise in their headphones or the text screens of their smart phones to define themselves, but also to those who glamorize mindless sex as being as uncomplicated as the next drink at a bar, who give not a thought to how their actions may cause others to suffer, or even and especially to the harm they do to themselves.

These days, you almost have to venture backwards in time to find pictures of life redeemed in spite of or because of depravity, dishonesty, error. The ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, Hardy, Austen, even Sinclair Lewis or Harper Lee … make your own list have so much more to say than just calling attention to or bewailing or glorifying what least deserves it in what we like to call civilization. Writing and painting and music hardly dare to be beautiful these days, except for a few poets. The cachet is in being gritty, hip, up on the latest fashionable depravity and/or illegality.

Just because all young men don’t look like Michelangelo’s David, must the majority aspire to replicate a troll under the Grimm brothers’ bridge? Rosetti’s dreamlike maidens with flowing hair and drapery may not conjure high fashion, but must the most successful models look as though they were spending their last bits of strength suggesting that what they want above all is to be ravaged? Every artist has a personal vision. Understood. It isn’t always conventionally pretty. Also understood. Yet even Guernica uses its ugliness to make a statement about perhaps the most lofty social goal: peace.

Being human should not be made to appear like a sentence to misery that might be lifted only by discouraged, even degraded compromise. A bit of fantasy that suggests how it might fit into real hope would be worth advertising and promoting. If artists can make a contribution to showing glory, they could serve a whole lot more than their bank accounts.

©2011 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com

Painting: Pia de’ Tolomei (1868-1880). Spencer Museum of Art, Unversity of Kansas, Lawrence. Model: Jane Morris

Joan Cannon’s latest book is a collection of short stories called
Peripheral Vision published by March Street Press and Amazon

November 2, 2011
US Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

SeniorWomen.com Note: Last week we posted an item about backscatter scanning machines and Global Entry. In March of 2011, we published this article:

http://www.seniorwomen.com/news/index.php/the-health-effects-of-airport-security-scanners

This week we note that the respected and Pulitzer award-winning investigative organzation, ProPublica, has posted a new article on the subject of the machines and their possible medical drawbacks.

by Michael Grabell

Look for a PBS NewsHour story on X-ray body scanners, reported in conjunction with ProPublica, to air later this month.

On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.

One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. “I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.”

The machine’s inventor, Steven W. Smith, assured the panelists that it was highly unlikely that the device would see widespread use in the near future. At the time, only 20 machines were in operation in the entire country.

“The places I think you are not going to see these in the next five years is lower-security facilities, particularly power plants, embassies, courthouses, airports and governments,” Smith said. “I would be extremely surprised in the next five to 10 years if the Secure 1000 is sold to any of these.”

Today, the United States has begun marching millions of airline passengers through the X-ray body scanners, parting ways with countries in Europe and elsewhere that have concluded that such widespread use of even low-level radiation poses an unacceptable health risk. The government is rolling out the X-ray scanners despite having a safer alternative that the Transportation Security Administration says is also highly effective.

A ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation of how this decision was made shows that in post-9/11 America, security issues can trump even long-established medical conventions. The final call to deploy the X-ray machines was made not by the FDA, which regulates drugs and medical devices, but by the TSA, an agency whose primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks.

Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 US airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as “safe,” glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation — the kind beamed directly at the body by the X-ray scanners — increase the risk of cancer.

November 1, 2011
Next National Model? Oregon Banks on Community Health Care

By Christine Vestal, Stateline Staff Writer
Pew Center on the States

Long before the national health law was enacted last year, a handful of states started work on their own health care overhauls. Massachusetts became the first state to require health coverage for all; it was the model for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Vermont has enacted a unique, state-based method of financing health care.

Oregon may soon become the next national model — for seeking to control costs and improve the public’s health at the same time. Setting up so-called “coordinated care organizations” as the front door for patients, the state aims to abandon the impersonal and fragmented way most people receive health services today. In its place, the state hopes, will be community-based systems that resemble the way medicine was practiced a century ago, when local doctors visited families in their living rooms.

Governor John Kitzhaber, a Democrat and former emergency room physician, signed legislation in June to launch Oregon’s first-of-its-kind health plan. It was not the only time the governor had been involved in a health policy change that would be both groundbreaking and controversial. In the 1980s, while he was state Senate president, and then during a first stint as governor, Kitzhaber promoted a re-ordering of state health care spending that critics derided as “rationing.” But a version of that system is still intact.

Today, the 64-year-old Kitzhaber is in a hurry to get the state’s new health care practices up and running before the national health law’s scheduled Medicaid expansion in 2014. Though he supports the Obama administration’s law, Kitzhaber says it did not go far enough.

“Expanding coverage to give more people access (which is the main thrust of the Affordable Care Act) — without changing the system people have access to — will only serve to increase cost and expand the national debt,” he told a crowd of health policy experts in Washington on October 4.

Coordinated care

Oregon’s new health care scheme aims to do what Massachusetts failed to do and the national health law seems unlikely to do — get a handle on costs. The coordinated care organizations — which are scheduled to be in operation sometime next year — are charged with doing most of the work.

In broad terms, the new law calls for creating local health care teams that would provide something new in the field. Instead of providing only medical services, the new organizations would combine comprehensive medical and dental care with behavioral health and substance abuse services.

The organizations would also offer preventive care, help Medicaid beneficiaries navigate the system and ensure that patients have access to any other local support services they need — all under one fixed fee per customer.

November 1, 2011
Scientists Use Brain Imaging to Reveal the Movies in Our Mind

The approximate reconstruction (right) of a movie clip (left) is achieved through brain imaging and computer simulation

Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences — in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.

As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online in the journal Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

Eventually, practical applications of the technology could include a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases.

It may also lay the groundwork for brain-machine interface so that people with cerebral palsy or paralysis, for example, can guide computers with their minds.

However, researchers point out that the technology is decades from allowing users to read others’ thoughts and intentions, as portrayed in such sci-fi classics as Brainstorm, in which scientists recorded a person’s sensations so that others could experience them.

October 31, 2011
Pissarro’s People at the Legion of Honor

Pissarro’s People brings us face to face with one of the most complex and captivating members of the Impressionist group, a man whose life was as quietly revolutionary as his art. The Legion of Honor exhibition, on view in San Francisco until January 22, 2012, offers a groundbreaking perspective on Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), the painter and printmaker best known for his large body of landscapes and urban views. This is the first exhibition to focus on Pissarro’s personal ties and social ideas through his lifelong engagement with the human figure.

Based on extensive new scholarship by curator Dr. Richard R. Brettell, the exhibition brings together more than one hundred oil paintings and works on paper from public and private collections around the world. Ranging from Pissarro’s earliest years in Paris until his death in 1903, these works explore the three dimensions of his life that are essential to a full understanding of the human element in his art: his family ties, his friendships and his intense intellectual involvement with the social and political theories of his time.

According to Brettell, “Scholars have tended to treat Pissarro’s politics and his art in two separate categories, often refusing to see the most basic connections between them. This is largely because Pissarro was less a political activist than a social and economic philosopher. The title of the exhibition, Pissarro’s People, is not merely an allusion to his politics, but points to a larger attempt to explore all aspects of his humanism. The exhibition embodies his pictorial humanism and creates a series of contexts, linking his web of family and friends to his profound social and economic concerns.”

October 28, 2011