Election Special – Reporters’ Sources on Senior Vote
Nov. 4, 2012 – Volume 12, Number 16
IN THIS ISSUE: It Don’t Mean a Thing, If It Ain’t Got … Ohio? Nevada?.
1. VOTE ELDERLY AND VOTE OFTEN:
Two Election Reporting Sources on Senior Vote
2. CALENDAR:
Help Toast GBOs 20th at GSA in San Diego Next Week
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS:
Modern Healthcare Names New Editor; Bob Stock’s “Safety Lessons From the Morgue” and Dan Beuttner’s “Island Where People Forget to Die” in the NYT; Bernard Starr on the Joys of Self-Publishing and His Son’s Marvel-ous Superhero Deal; and Fred Setterberg’s Lunch Bucket Paradise.
4. FISCAL CLIFF NOTES – SSI REACHES 40: SSI’s 40TH
And the Socialistic President Who Enacted It (Guess Who?)
Medicare Settlement Good, But No Miracle
1. VOTE ELDERLY AND VOTE OFTEN
Three Election-Reporting Sources on Senior Vote: The death one year ago of Case Western Reserve University ‘s Robert H. Binstock, the foremost political scientist in gerontology for four decades, left a huge gap in the electoral knowledge base on aging. Fortunately, three excellent sources for reporters on senior-voting patterns and influence will be available to reporters trying to gauge, for instance, the impact if any of the Medicare controversy in the Nov. 6 presidential election.
*** Susan MacManus comes first and foremost in the realm of number crunching from polling data. She is a distinguished professor at the University of South Florida’s Department of Government and International Affairs and author of Targeting the Senior Vote and, more recently, coauthor of Politics in States and Communities, 13th edition. MacManus and Binstock were the go-to interviews [http://bit.ly/Q9FkUo] on the gray electorate for years, and we’re happy to hear that she’s not only doing well, but weathered Hurricane Sandy with “no storm damage.”
MacManus, a past Suncoast Emmy nominee for her political analysis on WFLA TV, is an expert who gets deadlines (although, keep in mind that she’s also in demand). She e-mailed GBO that reporters can best contact her election week by calling her cell: 813-503-0561. Her office number is 813/974-5351, and e-mail: macmanus@cas.usf.edu.
*** Larry Polivka steps into the post-Binstock senior-vote breech. He isexecutive director of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University and Scholar in Residence of the Claude Pepper Foundation. (He is a former director of the Florida Agency for Aging and Disabled Services.) He’s long been one of the principal authorities in the country on long-term care policy and has been a consultant for bipartisan federal and state agencies. Polivka plans to adopt the Binstock analytical model for his election evaluation and do “a fairly fast critical analysis of the presidential and congressional results with a special focus on age and socioeconomic differences.” Later he will examine the election results, comparing and contrasting 2012 with past elections. That deeper examination won’t be done until late this month, although he will present some findings at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) conference in San Diego, Nov. 15-18. Polivka said he will especially parse out “the role Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may have played in shaping the results — or may not have played per Obama’s rather scary silence on these issues.”
For reporters calling him right after the election, though, he will be exploring initial data for “how people voted and why.” Polivka noted, “The latest Pew poll shows that the Republicans have a 19% advantage among 65+ registered voters, which is the same margin they had in 2010 and could be a real problem on Tuesday. The Social Security and Medicare issues should have kept this margin to less than 10 percent, but it doesn’t appear to be happening, hurting Obama’s chances in not only Florida, but in some Midwestern states as well, possibly. We’ll see. Reporters can contact Larry Polivka at lpolivka2@fsu.edu. His cell: 850 228 7289.
*** Christine L. Day Is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Orleans. The author of What Older Americans Think: Interest Groups and Aging Policy, (and co-author of Women’s PACs: Abortion and Elections) has done research on aging policy and partisan polarization, as well as interest groups representing older people, including some related electoral issues. Reporters can contact her at 504-280-3287, e-mail: clday@uno.edu.
2. CALENDAR (With a Toast for GBOs 20th)
Reporters covering the Gerontological Society of America
(GSA) in San Diego, in two weeks are invited to a Friday happy-hour gathering in the conference Press Room, Nov. 16, 5:30-7 p.m., at the San Diego Convention Center. Everyone will pour a tasty beverage and toast the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Journalists Network on Generations and GBO. We’ll grab some nibbles and circle up to find out who else is there and from where, and we’ll talk about developments on the generations beat.
After the Press Room schmooze, those who’d like to keep the connections going can head out together for dinner at a nearby eatery. (We’ll divide the “no-host” check for this on the simple math method-one bill split according to attendees at a moderately price restaurant.) Please let Paul Kleyman know if you’d like to join in, so he can get a count for the reservation:
pkleyman@newamericamedia.org.
Over 30 reporters are registered for the conference at this point. Reporters planning to be in San Diego then can still register for a complimentary press registration by contacting GSA’s Todd Kluss,
tkluss@geron.org.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Merrill Goozner Is Ending His GoozNews Blog
on health issues – but for a great reason. He’s been appointed as the new editor of Modern Healthcare. Based in Chicago, the weekly magazine and website has long been on the short list of top news sources in the health care field. He starts Dec. 3. Goozner e-mailed, “This is an exciting opportunity to help shape coverage of a publication that reaches most of the top leaders of America’s largest industry.”
“Safety Lessons From the Morgue” is the header on Bob Stock’s fascinating profile in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine of epidemiologist Susan P. Baker, 82. Stock, a former NYT editor and columnist on retirement, tells the tale of the scientists who spent more than four decades trying to find out why people are dying unnecessarily from accidents and what could be done to save those lives. We have things like child-car seats and evidence about the measurable dangers of male teens behind the wheel to thank her for.
The same issue includes the latest entry by Blue Zones author Dan Beuttner, “The Island Where People Forget to Die.” Beuttner, who keynoted last year’s Gerontological Society of America conference, has identified certain pockets — Blue Zones — around the world, from Costa Rica to Okinawa, where extreme longevity seems to be part of the local lifestyle. This time he focuses on the Greek island of Ikaria. We hope, though, that German chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t read about these centenarians. She might want to impose an age austerity limit on them of only 95.
*** Gen-Beat Columnist and Gero-Psycologist Bernard Starr
recently continued his informative and insightful writing on the new era in book publishing with his article, “The New Vanity Publishing: Traditional Publishing”. Starr, who has done books both through established publishers and the newer self-publishing method, writes in part, “Traditional publishing has … become, in many instances, the vanity choice. The new world of self-publishing has little in common with the old vanity publishing, but for many writers it still bears the taint of vanity. Self-publishing has not only democratized publishing, it has opened up the opportunity for authors to publish at low or no cost, own all the rights, control the pricing and timetable for publishing, and get their books listed for sale and distribution on major outlets and platforms — e.g. Amazon, kindle, nook, other e-readers, Google and more.” He declares, “Fact is that authors no longer need a publisher.”
On the intergenerational publishing front, Bernie’s son, Jason Starr, is making history in the realm of dark pop fiction. Already a successful mystery writer, recently moved faster than a light-speed laser into (speeding bullets are so-o-o Superman) by signing a deal with Marvel Comics’ MAX imprint for “mature” page turners. Just being published is the debut issue of “Wolverine MAX.” Written by Jason with art from Connor Willumson and Roland Boschi, as well as covers by Jock, says a Marvel release, “the ongoing series will present a different version of the X-Man called Logan. Set apart from the Marvel Universe with its own set of rules, its own history and its own take on the wild mutant, ‘Wolverine MAX’ starts with a theft in modern Tokyo before digging in to the past of a man with no memory as his greatest enemy waits in the wings.” A man with no memory. But what about RomneyMAX, the man with too many memories about what he said?
*** San Francisco Author Fred Setterberg
might well have been listening to the Mamas & the Papa’s “California Dreamin ” when he decided to switch to fiction from his usual nonfiction topics on everything from chemical contamination to the Golden State’s shift to a majority minority culture. His novel, Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True-Life Novel, Heyday Books [https://heydaybooks.com/book/lunch-bucket-paradise/] is set in the 1950s and ’60s, and, as one blurb notes, “reveals the promise, mystery and danger behind the American dream.” It was recently shortlisted for the 2012 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, given by the William Saroyan Foundation and Stanford University Libraries, and has received several other awards.
Another reviewer described Lunch Bucket Paradise as a “darkly humorous, affectionate, but utterly unsentimental, look at the world the ‘Greatest Generation,'” not to mention their boomer kids. This might be your “good read,” if you grew up in Eisenhower’s America; discovered sex, drugs, assassination and Vietnam; and wouldn’t mind remembering it all through some great characters. Setterberg posts a couple of sample chapters on Setterberg’s website or the Heyday Books site. He’ll send a review copy to writers who might be looking at the boomer experience, say for your own good-reading list for the holidays. Drop him a note with your mailing address and say GBO sent you: fsetterberg@sbcglobal.net.
4. FISCAL CLIFF NOTES ON SSI- Any Politicians Remember the Lower-Than-Middle-Class?
SSI REACHES 40: It was the day before Halloween that year, and the president went on the radio to praise the new Supplemental Security Income bill he’d just signed to give a small, but important financial lift to exceptionally poor people for whom Social Security or other benefit programs just wasn’t enough. He stated in his address,
“[M]illions of older Americans who live in poverty, along with the blind and the disabled, will be helped by a new Federal floor under their income …. Free of the inequities and red tape which plague the present system, this program … can mean a big step out of poverty and toward a life of dignity and independence.”
Obviously, such a Big Government sentiment couldn’t get elected today, right? And who was that socialistic Democrat? You guessed it — President Richard M. Nixon (only four months after the Watergate break-in) and days before his landslide reelection.
SSI, a federal-state program – with eligibility barriers set by the states-now helps 8 million of the nation’s neediest people – people whose lot figured little in the all but endless presidential campaign. But, according to National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC) Executive Director Paul Nathanson, the program “has been seriously neglected over the last four decades and needs to be strengthened.”
He noted in a release this week that SSI today provides individuals with a total monthly income of $698 a month, only about three-quarters of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Some states also provide a modest supplement, he said, “but never enough even to come up to equal the FPL.”
Nathanson noted, “The formula used systematically underestimates the necessary expenses of a population that is at least age 65 or has serious disabilities.” To qualify, he explained, “an individual cannot have more than $2,000 ($3,000 for an eligible couple) in resources (a home, a car and certain other items are exempt). This amount has increased 33 percent in the last 40 years, even though the cost of living today is 5.5 times what it was in 1972.”
NSCLC is joining with the Latinos for a Secure Retirement (LSR) coalition to call for needed modernization of the program. The coalition’s Executive Director Jeff Cruz said that among their recommendations is expanding benefits, increasing eligibility for refugees and Cuban-Haitian entrants, and updating eligibility requirements to reflect inflation. To enable people to make ends meet, LSR says, SSI officials should also calculate SSI’s annual cost-of-living adjustment using the special Consumer Price Index developed some years ago for elders (called the CPI-E). That measure includes things like the rising amount of out-of-pocket health costs not figured into either the current CPI or the FPL. Find additional info regarding SSI and needed reforms at the LSR or NSCLC websites.
5. LONG-TERM CARE NOTES: Medicare Settlement Good, But No Miracle
Medicare’s Federal Court Settlement on Long-Term Care two weeks ago stirred a lot of hope among observers of senior care around the country, but as author by Howard Gleckman, a long-time journalists on health economics, put it in his Forbes blog on Halloween, “The settlement does not affect long-term care benefits in any way.”
Surveys continue to show the almost half of American adults still don’t understand that Medicare does not pay for most continuing care at home or in a nursing home, assisted living or community settings, beyond very short and narrow post-hospital limits – unlike most other advance economies.
But then a hopeful ray came down from the federal bench that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had reached a class-action settlement in Jimmo v. Sebelius. It says the government will longer stop or refuse skilled nursing or rehabilitation care if a patient is deemed to show no improvement. That’s what, say, stroke or Alzheimer’s victims have been told for decades, if they don’t show they can improve, even if continuing care would stabilize them and keep them from slipping more deeply into disability. “What, you can’t get back to high jumping again? Tough.”
But, as Gleckman suggests, there was a lot of confusion (maybe wishful thinking) about the CMS agreement that just maybe removal of the failure-to-improve restriction might open the way to covering areas so many seniors and family caregivers have been able to secure in their time of need. Gleckman explains, though, “Medicare did not pay for long-stay nursing home care, home health aides, or other long-term care services before this lawsuit, and it will not do so now.”
The good news, however, is that the new court settlement will help many seniors and people with disabilities get extended rehabilitation or skilled nursing assistance. For more details see Gleckman’s article, “Medicare Settlement Does Not Expand Long-Term Care Benefits,” (October 31). (The settlement won’t go into effect until the federal judge in the case signs off on it, which those involved expect her to do.
Reporters can find other relevant details on the case at the website of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, which lodged the lawsuit with other groups. You can contact the Center’s executive director, Judith Stein for interviews at (860) 456-7790; e-mail jstein@medicareadvocacy.org.