Tag Archives for AARP

Today’s Seniors are Healthier, But More Are Uninsured

Published in Pawtucket Times on May 27, 2002

Three years ago, Alice, 60, lost her job as a graphic designer along with 143 co-workers when the Providence-based company closed. Corporate management had made the decision to  move South to tap into a cheaper labor pool.

The Pawtucket resident considered her full-time job to be a fulfilling one. Most important, she had good health insurance coverage with a very nominal monthly cop-pay of $ 80. Although she received coverage under COBRA, Alice’s monthly health care premium shot up to $ 256. When the federally mandated health insurance coverage ended, her monthly health insurance premium almost double to $ 600.

Alice never went back to full-time employment, choosing to take partial retirement in order to collect a pension. To make ends meet, she is currently teaching art classes and working part-time for a nonprofit art group. When her COBRA coverage ran out, Alice signed up for health insurance coverage from the National Association of Self-Employed. This reduced her monthly premium to $ 253; however she was left with a $ 10,000 deductible per year.

At age 60, Alice recently had a hip replacement surgery. Before the operation, the hospital required a $ 5,000 down payment, forcing her to withdraw money from her several saving accounts. Now recuperating from surgery that costs more than $ 10,000, she is about $ 5,000 in debt.

According to a new AARP report, seniors age 50 and over may be healthier and living longer overall, but their long-term health security remains at risk. In the Ocean State, Alice and other seniors have lived the findings of the report. They struggle to maintain their costly health insurance  coverage.

The report, “Beyond 50: A Report to the Nation on Trends in Health Security” is the most comprehensive picture to date of the state of health care for older Americans.

Changes in health security during the last 20 years have been driven by increased reliance on prescription drugs and other innovative technologies, changes in chronic disease and challenges in chronic care, greater longevity and functional limitations patients’ roles and responsibilities as consumers and fluctuating cost growth, the AARP report finds.

“Americans age 50-plus have the chance to capitalize on wonderful advances in longevity. But they need a chain of dominoes to fall right – initial good health, adequate health care coverage, affordable quality care that’s easy to access and a system that encourages informed decision making,” said AARP CEO Bill Novelli.

“Missing one of these dominoes puts a person’s – and a generations – whole health security at risk,” says Novelli.

At age 50, Americans can expect to live another 30 years, the report notes, almost nine years longer than expected in 1900, and fewer are suffering disabilities. The aging baby boomers are healthier with fewer smoking and more using preventative services and trying to exercise.

The AARP report also found that more people age 50-64 are uninsured than in the past and those with insurance are worried about losing what coverage they have or receiving fewer benefits in the future because Medicare doesn’t cover prescription drugs and few Americans have long-term care insurance.

“It’s a good news/bad news report,” said Novelli. “Personal behavior can make a positive difference in people’s health and longevity, but health care for Americans age 50-plus is harder to get, to pay for and to manage. The health care system is a non-system.”

The AARP report calls for the public health system to continue to promote positive health behaviors.

In addition, the general lack of long-term care coverage and the increasing inadequacy and instability of health care coverage for portions of the 50-plus population must be addressed by policy makers.

In 2000, 39 million Americans were uninsured. Out of this number, 5.2 million were seniors between  ages 50 to 64. With the graying of America’s population, the Rhode Island congressional delegation must work closely together to craft meaningful legislation that will create a safety net for the underinsured and uninsured. It’s now time to fix this long-debated policy problem once and for all.

Every senior must have access to affordable health care services. For me, that right is as American as apple pie.

Beer Commercial Brews Condemnation from Senior Organizations, Advocates

Published in the Pawtucket Times on May 13, 2002

This Bud’s Not for You.”

That’s what radio commentator Bill Benson told his vast WMKV-FM listening audience in Cincinnati, Ohio, last July when he called for Anheuser-Bush to pull a radio commercial that used elder abuse to pitch Bud Ice beer.

Sadly, this month Bill Benson reported in is Washington Aging Report that Anheuser-Busch again has brewed “bad faith” with the showing of another trashy television commercial.

Last July, Benson rallied aging advocates from across the nation to successfully force Anheuser-Bush, the maker of Budweiser beer, to pull a controversial radio commercial off the air.

Benson – a former acting assistant secretary for aging at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who now heads the Maryland-based Benson Consulting Group- along with the AARP and aging advocates, condemned the St. Louis-based beer company for using ageism to sell its brews.

Last July, much to the surprise or Anheuser-Busch officials, wide-spread criticism erupted with the release of its advertising campaign, “She Married Steven Buck Simpson.”

The commercial featured a 22-year-old woman gleefully talking about how she physically, emotionally and financially abused her frail 93-year-old tycoon husband. Ultimately, the young woman leaves the country in her elder husband’s private jet taking away all his money.

Benson along with elder law attorneys, ombudsmen, and aging advocates, called the advertising campaign tacky, bombarding the station’s largest beer maker with calls, tells  letters and emails.

“Elder abuse is not a joking matter and your message to the country is inappropriate,” said AARP President Ester Canja in a letter sent to Anheuser-Busch CEO August A. Busch III.

When the dust settled this public relations fiasco, the commercial was quickly pulled.

But now a new television commercial has drawn the ire of Benson and his fellow aging advocates.

In a recent radio commentary, Paul Greenwood, who heads the Elder Abuse Prosecution Union at San Diego County’s District Attorney’s Office, told Benson of a commercial he viewed while watching a televised NBA basketball game on April 29 on TNT

Greenwood became annoyed when Anheuser-Busch ran a spot featuring young people ripping off vulnerable adults.

The offensive commercial began with a young couple seated on a dining room table with the aging parents of the young woman. The young man, evidently the daughter’s significant other tells her elderly parents that he and his daughter look forward to moving in and gaining the property when they die.  Then he apparently complements the elderly parents for still having “motor skills” and finishes by saying, “She tells me you are loaded.”

Every day Greenwood sees the impact of exploitation of older Americans, said Benson.  His unit has prosecuted 124 felony elder abuse cases in 2000, and 147 felony cases in 2001.  This year, the number of cases prosecuted may well reach 225. That’s why Greenwood got offended when the beer commercials trivialized the financial exploitation of the elderly.

Just as he did when the last commercial raised his ire. Benson put the spotlight on the new Anheuser-Busch spot, giving it a thumbs-down in his latest Washington Aging Report and calling on thousands of aging advocates , via the internet, to urge the company to drop the commercial.

At press time, Anheuser-Busch officials had no comment about the latest controversial ad campaign.

Maybe it is time for the beer maker to solicit proposals to seek the services of a new advertising firm, one that can create material that is both humorous and creative, yet not offensive.

At the very least, they should require the creative types who develop the company’s advertising strategies to attend sensitivity training seasons.

In his radio  commentary, Benson firmly stated “my taste buds will no longer taste Bud again.” With hundreds of thousands of aging advocates and seniors following his  lead Anheuser-Busch just might finally get it at least this time around.

Supreme Court Jumps into Age Discrimination Debate

Published in Pawtucket Times on March 25, 2002

In 1983, my 70-year-old father expressed his concerns about job hunting in his senior years.

Like many at his age, he was not considering retirement but was seeking a new professional challenge. He began to put out feelers for new employment while still being employed by a Dallas, Texas-based retail chain after m ore than 40 years of service.

They won’t hire me if they find out my age,” my father staid, adding that he believed that job experience gleaned from years of employment is not valued by many in corporate America.

Sadly, my father’s fears of age discrimination expressed to me years ago is still documented today by the federal government.

Last year, more than 20 percent of the 80,840 discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against private-sector employers were related to age discrimination.

Last week, the Supreme Court jumped into the age discrimination debate and will determine whether seniors have the same legal rights as other types of discrimination claim suits do.

Layoffs at the Florida Power Corporation during a series of reorganizations led to the termination of Wanda Adams and 116 older workers.

More than 70 precent of these persons were at least 40 years old or older. A lawsuit, Adams vs. Florida Power Corp. was filed, claiming the Florida-based corporation discriminated against older workers based on their age in violation of the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Under the 1967 federal statute, older workers must not be treated differently than younger workers because of their age.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed the trial court’s decision that older workers could challenge their termination by proving that their employer’s action had a discriminatory motive or intent (disparate treatment) rather than a disproportionate impact (disparate impact) on older workers.  AARP believes that this court ruling would make age bias suits tougher to prove, giving employers a greater ability to trim their payrolls of older workers.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court is posed to consider a hot judicial issue, especially one that will impact millions of employed aging baby boomers.

AARP, a Washington, DC-based aging advocacy group that represents more than 35 million members, has filed a “friend of the court brief” showing that its support of disproportionate impact, for use in proving age discrimination suits.

The nonprofit group says that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that these types of suits are allowed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to prove discrimination based on an employee’s gender, religion or race.

AARP official Laurie McCann states that if the U.S. Supreme Court supports AARP’s legal position, then older workers can win suits by not having to show employer’s intent to discriminate.

“Older employees will always find it hard to prove intent, because it’s difficult to get inside the employer’s head to get evidence as to what they are thinking.”

McCann says oral arguments were heard on March 20, and the justices ruling should be expected to the end of June.

“We will explore  the possibility of a legislative fix,” she adds, “to allow older workers to prove age bias if they’ll company’s practices and policies has a disproportionate impact on older workers.”

Adds AARP State Director Kathleen Connell, “Once unemployed older workers face sharply limited employment opportunities, re-employment after job loss declines dramatically at older ages.

“Older workers have a fundamental right to work in an environment free of age discrimination,” she says. “Age discrimination can be blatant or subtle and can include such practices as refusing to hire or promote older workers, encouraging their retirement, targeting them in reductions in force, curtailing their employee benefits on liming their training opportunities job responsibilities and duties.”

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules to make age bias suits tougher to prove, then aging baby boomers will continue to face the same concerns of my father’s generation – that age discrimination runs rampant throughout corporate America.

When reviewing the merits of the Adams case, it is hope that the justices will see the wisdom of giving older workers the same legal clout as women, minorities, gays and religious persons. Courts have allowed these groups to legally challenge racial, sexual or religious discrimination on the grounds that an employer’s actions had a disproportionate impact on them.

It’s time to protect older workers, too. It’s only fair.