Race, Education Cut U.S. Longevity; Investigative Nursing Home Data
Aug. 21, 2012 — Volume 12, Number 13
IN THIS ISSUE: Vote for Romney—Hugh Romney! (Google Him and Wear a Red Nose for Peace.)
“Health Affairs” Study Shows U.S. Longevity Decline by Race, Education
ProPublica’s New “Nursing Home Inspect” App Helps Reporters Expose Violations
3. THE DIGITAL AGE:
Poll Says Boomers Open to Docs Prescribing Apps; “Yo Is This Ageist?” Is New York freelancer Ashton Applewhite’s new blog
Ryan Plan Tested—and Failed—in Eastern Europe —
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1. DISPARITIES WATCH
“Health Affairs” Study Shows Longevity Decline by Race, Education
Racial and widening educational differences have shortened the lives of African Americans and those with lower educational levels, according to a report in the August issue of the journal “Health Affairs.”
In the article, titled, “Differences In Life Expectancy Due To Race And Educational Differences Are Widening, And Many May Not Catch Up”, the authors states, “We found that in 2008 U.S. adult men andwomen with fewer than 12 years of education had life expectancies not much better than those of all adults in the 1950s and 1960s. When race and education are combined, the disparity is even more striking. In 2008 white U.S .men and women with 16 years or more of schooling had life expectancies far greater than black Americans with fewer than 12 years of education—14.2 years more for white men than black men, and 10.3 years more for white women than black women.”
The article lists 14 authors, including some of the most distinguished named in gerontology. They state, further, “These gaps have widened over time and have led to
at least two “Americas,” if not multiple others, in terms of life expectancy, demarcated by level of education and racial-group membership. The message for policy makers is clear: implement educational enhancements at young, middle, and older ages for people of all races, to reduce the large gap in health and longevity that persists today.”
The study’s lead authors is demographer S. Jay Olshansky (sjayo@uic.edu), University of Illinois at Chicago. Among the others are Lisa Berkman , director of the Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University, in Boston, Massachusetts; Laura L. Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity; and James Jackson, University of Michigan.
Reporters can request the article from Sue Ducat, Communications Director, at press@healthaffairs.org or via phone, (301) 841-9962.
2. LONG-TERM CARE WATCH:
ProPublica just unveiled a new tool for long-term care reporting called Nursing Home Inspect Developed by ProPublica’s Lena Groeger with Charles Ornstein, the tool allows users to easily search through thousands of recent government inspection reports from around the country, most since the beginning of 2011.
Ornstein noted in an e-mail that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) put the narratives from nursing home inspection reports online in July. He added, “Unlike the CMS site, however, Nursing Home Inspect allows searches by keyword and city, as well as by a home’s name. Also unlike CMS, our app allows you to search across all the reports at once. You can search by state or by the severity level of the deficiencies cited. The default search ranks results by the severity level of the problem found.”
The tool is starting with a database covering about 118,000 deficiencies at 14,565 of the nation’s more than 15,000 U.S. nursing homes. “As CMS releases newer inspection reports in the future, we plan to add them,” he said.
Reporters (or researchers) can use Nursing Home Inspect to reveal patterns of problems at local or regional facilities. Especially by cross-referencing similar terms for problems, such as pressure sore, bed sore, decubitus, purulent and others, investigators can expose significant issues. Ornstein also cited other word searches: “conviction (found nursing home staff with criminal records); ignore, mistreat and rude (found residents who believed they had been mistreated). A search for the words terminate and suspend often produces results involving nursing home staff who were disciplined for alleged misconduct.”
Read an article on the Nursing Home Inspect app. And here’s a link to a tipsheet on how to best use the app. Ornstein invited questions or comments on the app. Contact him at charles.ornstein@propublica.org, or phone him at (917) 512-0222.
3. THE DIGITAL AGE
*** A New Poll says boomers are open to docs prescribing medical apps for exercise, fitness, weight loss and the like. The marketing-oriented Mitchell Poll found in their national survey of 600 smartphone users that more than half (57%) of 600 participating boomers “are likely to download a general information medical app.” Also, nearly half (48%) said they would download an app to monitor heart disease, diabetes or other chronic diseases. In addition, 47% said would also download an app to monitor weight and exercise.
Suzie Mitchell, CEO of Mitchell PR, based in the Detroit area, which released the
poll, said a quarter of boomers surveyed (19 million, or 24%) own smart phones, constitution a huge and growing potential market for mobile app developers. Six in 10 of the poll’s respondents said they’d most likely to download a health and wellness app recommended by a doctor, compared with suggestions made by family (18%) or friends (5%).
Half of the older smartphone set (49%) has downloaded six or more apps, and
another quarter (28%) has downloaded 1-5 apps. Of those surveyed, Mitchell said in a release, “a quarter (24%) has either been diagnosed with heart disease (15%), diabetes (7%) or both (2%). Seven-in-ten (70%) with diabetes are likely to download a mobile app dealing with diabetes. Half (50%) with a heart condition would download a heart disease app. People with serious diseases will download apps to help them live longer.” More then seven in 10 said they will pay for medical mobile apps, and a third would spend $1 or $2 on a medical app.
Also, writers on consumer tech, social media and such should keep an eye on Mitchell’s blog on the site. Those with questions can contact her at suzie@mitchellpr.com.
*** Yo Is This Ageist? Is New York freelancer Ashton Applewhite’s new blog,
which she calls “a shameless imitation of the excellent yoisthisracist blog” known for its sharp humor. Adding, “Ageism is the last frontier,” Applewhite offers snappy responses to people who briefly describe comments they hear or incidents they encounter.
For instance last week “Anonymous asked: Is this ageist? Four yentas go to lunch at the Fontainebleu and the waiter says, ‘Welcome, ladies! Is anything all right?’” Applewhite responded: “ageist and anti-Semitic! sexist, too. also funny.”
She noted in an e-mail, that at least most people “have heard of racism, and have some inkling of how it works. Ageism, on the other hand, has yet to bleep onto most people’s radar. Most can’t even define it, and have no sense of how it’s internalized or plays out in the culture at large. That, of course, leaves them susceptible to the ageist messages everywhere that frame two thirds of our lives as decline.” Check out these short takes on ageism – okay, gals and guys, too, put down the “age-defying” cream first so you don’t smudge the keyboard. And, if so inclined, post a comment on the blog or drop her a note at ashton.applewhite@gmail.com.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** Ryan Plan Tested—and Failed—in Eastern Europe: People’s Pension author Eric Laursen posted a blog last week (Aug. 16) that goes a significant step beyond the mountain of conjecture about what would happen were the GOP’s presumptive VP nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., to see his proposal to privatize part of Social Security implemented. In the blog, “Pie in the Sky in Eastern Europe: The Ryan Plan in Action,” Laursen cites “an important new paper [that] looks at what happened when Hungary and Poland attempted something similar with their national pension systems. The results were ugly.”
Laursen also dismissed reports that Ryan is no longer pushing Social Security privatization. “House Republican leaders last year ‘refused’ to let [Ryan], their Budget Committee chair ‘add changes to Social Security’ into the budget he wrote and that passed the chamber with solid GOP support. This year, he and his colleagues again ‘left the program untouched.’ That’s not quite true.” Laursen says Ryan has now written
two budgets, both of which include “a vague mechanism requiring Congress and the president, in the event that Social Security becomes “not sustainable,” to “put forward their best ideas” for how to correct this.”
*** Turning Medicare Into Vouchers Won’t Work,” says Yale health policy expert Theodore Marmor in an op-ed [http://www2.tbo.com/news/opinion/2012/aug/18/naopino2-turning-medicare- into-vouchers-wont-work-ar-467518/] published Sunday, Aug. 18, in the “Tampa Tribune.” (Is there a Republican in town, yet?) If you don’t already know this, Marmor is one of the most widely respected authors on the politics and policy of Medicare. In the piece, he writes, “The Ryan Budget Plan wouldn’t really control Medicare’s costs. It would simply shift them to future senior citizens and make Medicare less efficient. There’s no good reason to weaken and eventually dump a program that’s met the needs of America’s seniors and disabled citizens so well for decades. Instead of wasting time and money pushing snake oil schemes to replace Medicare, let’s tackle the real problem of rising health care costs with sensible cost controls, paid for by taxing — not cutting taxes for — those who can best afford it. That way, Medicare can survive and succeed for a long time to come.”
*** The Two Faces of “Entitlements”: The term is so loaded, the NRA tried to sign those programs up for membership. But on NPR’s “Fresh Air” last week (Aug. 14), linguist Geoff Nunberg conducted a revealing separation procedure of the conjoined meanings of the term. His commentary (read or listen at http://n.pr/TCyhkQ), posted with a mind to “Ryan’s ascent,” explains that one sense of the word was an obscure political legalism referring to entitlements “just programs that provide benefits that aren’t subject to budgetary discretion. But the word also implied that the recipients had a moral right to the benefits. As [Lyndon Baines Johnson] said in justifying Medicare: ‘By God, you can’t treat Grandma this way. She’s entitled to it.’” That was 1965.
But in the late 1970s, according to Nunberg, “psychologists began to use a different notion of entitlement as a diagnostic for narcissism.” He continues, “By the early ’80s, you no longer had to preface ‘sense of entitlement’ with ‘unwarranted’ or ‘bloated.’ That was implicit in the word ‘entitlement’ itself, which had become the epithet of choice whenever you wanted to scold a group like the baby boomers for their superficiality and selfishness.”
Nunberg, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, did his historical homework, noting “early opponents of Social Security charged that it would discourage individual thrift and reduce Americans to the level of Europeans. But now the language itself helps make the argument, by using the same word for the political cause and the cultural effects. You can deplore ‘the entitlement society’ without actually having to say whether you mean the social or political sense of the word, or even acknowledging that there’s any difference. It’s a strategic rewriting of linguistic history, as if we call the programs entitlements simply because people feel entitled to them.”
A personal note: Several years ago, when Nunberg referred to the “burden” of Social Security, I cited the reference in an issue of my Age Beat Online e-news for journalists (now called Generations Beat Online) explaining that the use of “burden” to describe the program’s future finances had seeped imperceptibly into reporting due to a longstanding conservative campaign against entitlements and reinforced the public’s negative impression of these social insurance protections. Much to my surprise, I received a not from him soon thereafter thanking me for this observation and promising to revise the reference, which he did in subsequent versions, including as a chapter of one of his books, and in speeches. At the time, I asked how he’d seen my complaint in such an obscure professional e-newsletter. I was very impressed by Nunberg’s reply that he, unlike most writers, uses Google to monitor references to his commentaries in order to gauge the response.