GBO NEWS: Pulitzer & AHCJ Winners; Once-Tortured Elder Black Prisoners; Social Security & 2016 Campaign
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
April 23, 2015 — Volume 15, Number 7
Editor’s Note: GBO News, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generation publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. You can subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge simply by sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. You’ll receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
IN THIS ISSUE: Social Security Moved to DOD–Financing Now Undebated.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: Wall Street Journal’s “Medicare Unmasked” Takes Pulitzer Prize and 2015 Health Journalism Award; Other AHCJ Winners: *** “Kindness of Strangers,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, by Barbara Peters-Smith; *** “Precious Pills,” Bloomberg News, by Robert Langreth; *** “Medicare Advantage Money Grab,” Center for Public Integrity, by Fred Schulte & Colleagues; “MIA In The War On Cancer: Where Are The Low-Cost Treatments?” ProPublica, by Jake Bernstein.
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Iowa GOP Sex After Sixty Gag Was No Joke (to authors Dr. Robert Butler & Myrna Lewis); *** Herbert Gold to Thomas Wolfe, “Yes You Can Go Home, Again—But at 91.”
3. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: “How to Bring Clarity and Urgency to Social Security Reporting” [in the 2016 campaign], by Trudy Lieberman in the Columbia Journalism Review
*** “Tortured, Jailed Black Seniors Released–But Denied Social Security,” by Frederick H. Lowe, NorthStar News Today/New America Media;
*** “GENTRIFIED: Gentrification Takes Toll on Oakland Seniors,” by Laura McCamy, Oakland Local/New America Media;
*** “We Need a Role-Reversal in the Conversation on Dying,” by V.J. Periyakoil, MD, New York Times, with link to her new PLOS One study;
*** “Medicare Considers Changing Hospice Care Policy,” by Susan Jaffe, USA Today/Kaiser Health News;
*** “The Medical System May Treat You Well, But Less So After You Reach Age 80,” by geriatrician Louise Aronson, Washington Post;
*** “Caring for Mom & Dad,” produced by Larkin McPhee, narrated by Meryl Streep, WGBH Boston for national PBS broadcast, May 7;
*** Homes on the Range (Dr. Bill Thomas’ Green House nursing home alternative), by the Media Policy Center, PBS Stations through May.
*** “How Long Are You Likely to Live?” and “The Power of Positive Aging,” both by Flora Davis, Silver Century Foundation
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
Winning Stories on Aging Are Among Awardees – including one tapped Monday for a Pulitzer Prize — to be honored this week at the Association of Health Care Journalists national conference in Silicon Valley. (For a full list go to the AHCJ website.) Here are AHCJ’s 2015 award winner related to health and aging in two catagories:
*** HEALTH POLICY: First Place (large media), “Medicare Unmasked,” Wall Street Journal, by multiple staff members over the last five years. This ongoing series just won a Pulitzer. Among the 2014 stories garnering kudos from AHCJ’s judges were “Why It’s So Hard to Fix Medicare Fraud“ (Dec. 11), by John Carreyrou and Christopher S. Stewart, and “Medicare Overbilling Probes Run Into Political Pressure” (Dec. 25), by Stewart and Christopher Weaver.
According to AHCJ, WSJ “forced the government to publicly release important data that had been kept secret for decades, and analyzed it to uncover extensive medical abuses that cost taxpayers.” That eventually triggered “a sweeping WSJ investigation into the $600 billion federal system. In the process, the Journal has struck a major blow for gaining accessibility to government data at a time when the Obama administration is fighting to keeping information closely held from the media and public.” The Pulitzer Prize board, awarding it for investigative reporting, called it “a pioneering project that gave Americans unprecedented access to previously confidential data on the motivations and practices of their health care providers.”
*** First Place (small media), “The Kindness of Strangers,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, by generations-beat reporter Barbara Peters Smith, is a three-part series (Dec. 6-8, 2014) exposing tragic gaps in Florida’s system of senior guardianships (called conservatorships in other states). As GBONews noted in an extensive summary, “The misuse of court proceedings to extract an elder’s right to make decisions on their own behalf—often without the person or legal representation for him or her in court—has long been an issue underlying elder abuse concerns, especially of the financial kind.
Peters-Smith, according to a project blurb about the series, ‘read hundreds of case files, interviewing elder law attorneys, judges, guardians, and wards [of the state] and their families.’” AHCJ’s judges commented, “This is a beautifully written, well sourced series and because of it, a woman locked in an assisted-living facility regained her civil rights.”
*** BUSINESS (Large Media): First Place, “Precious Pills,” Bloomberg News, by Robert Langreth. In this five-part series Langreth, who has continued to dig into the issue in subsequent stories this year, developed what AHCJ called “a breakthrough analysis.” Although not narrowly focused on pharmaceuticals for seniors, guess who uses most of the nation’s prescription drugs?
Langreth and his Bloomberg colleagues “tracked down historical data for all big-selling brand name drugs in the U.S. and found dozens whose prices had doubled in just seven years. As a result of the soaring prices, we found that patients increasingly encounter tough measures by insurers, including outright bans. In some cases, the prices are so high – $5,000 a month or more – that patients who are covered still can’t afford copays that are based on a percentage of the price.”
Second Place, “Medicare Advantage Money Grab,” Center for Public Integrity (CPI), by Fred Schulte, David Donald and Erin Durkin. This continuing series exposed almost $70 billion, from 2008-2013, in “improper” Medicare payments to these managed-care Advantage plans, which Congress created years ago. The CPI website explains, “The investigation exposed how federal officials missed multiple opportunities to corral tens of billions of dollars in overcharges and other billing errors tied to inflated risk scores.”
That is, under Medicare rules, these senior-care plans fudged-up billing categories into higher paying realms intended for patients with conditions placing them at greater health risk—ad more costly to treat. Schulte and his colleagues used government data for the first time to plot risk-score changes at more than 5,700 health plans in 3,000 U.S. counties between 2007 and 2011.
Third Place, “MIA In The War On Cancer: Where Are The Low-Cost Treatments?” ProPublica by Jake Bernstein. Says the AHCJ website, “In the war against cancer, pharma is betting on new blockbuster cancer drugs that cost billions to develop and can be sold for thousands of dollars a dose. Left behind are low-cost alternatives – often existing off-label medications, including generics – that have shown some merit but don’t have enough profit potential for drug companies to invest in researching their anti-cancer properties.”
Congratulations to these and other 2015 AHCJ winners. If you’re in the conference neighborhood this Friday (April 24) at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, Ballroom A at 1:40 p.m., for a splendid panel GBO’s editor will be moderating, “Connecting with Your Audience About End-of-Life Care.” It will feature bestselling author (Knocking on Heaven’s Door) Katy Butler; V.J. Periyakoil, M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine; and G. Jay Westbrook, M.S., R.N., C.H.P.N., clinical director, Compassionate Journey. There’s more about this in the last issue of GBONews. Come by and say Hi.
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Iowa GOP Sex After Sixty Gag Was No Joke: When the Iowa Republican politician went viral last month, caught reading a copy of Sex After Sixty on the floor of the state legislature, the co-authors would have been delighted they’d distracted him from the debate in progress over collective bargaining rights for teachers. The late gerontology team of Robert N. Butler, MD, and his wife Myrna Lewis, PhD, published four editions of the book from 1976 to the renamed Love and Sex After 60 in 2002. State Rep. Ross Paustian, 59, had received the book as a gag from fellow GOP rulemaker, Rep. Robert Bacon, who’d recently turned Six-Oh! It’s clear from the viral photo that Bacon had lifted the older, edition with its frayed dust jacket—from a used books bargain bin in Des Moines.
Were the venerable Butler and Lewis still with us, that most gracious pair surely would have taken pity on those bumbling boomers and at the very least sent them a post-Viagra edition. But at least Bacon gave him a hard cover. As for the debate on teachers, maybe the Iowa legislature’s dysfunctional duo just needs a stack of McGuffey Readers and some knuckle-rapping rulers. Iowa—drive you van through this corn, Hillary.
*** Herbert Gold to Thomas Wolfe, “Yes You Can Go Home, Again—But at 91.” The nonagenarian author—friend of Anais Nin, Allen Ginsberg and pretty much all of the Beat Generation—is heading back to his hometown library in Lakewood, Ohio (suburban Cleveland) May 7, 7 p.m. The occasion: a reading and signing of his 32nd book (and 20th novel), When a Psychopath Falls in Love (Jorvik Press, 2015) and his recently reissued memoir, Not Dead Yet: A Feisty Bohemian Explores the Art of Growing Old. As a journalist, Gold has covered wide-ranging stories from the sad life of Haiti to counterculture events for many major national media.
3. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** “How to Bring Clarity and Urgency to Social Security Reporting,” [http://tinyurl.com/mhyc7h2] by Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review is a critical Q&A with Teresa Ghilarducci, who heads the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School in New York City. She’s co-author of the study, “Are U.S. Workers Ready for Retirement?”
Lieberman leads the interview: “Social Security is looming as a major campaign issue—should it be cut or expanded? And that, of course, calls for reporters who understand what the system does and how various proposals would change it, and who can clearly explain what’s at stake for both current and future retirees.” Ghilarducci explains how journalists can understand the issue—and why they frequently miss and even misreport the facts on Social Security.
Here are some excerpts:
What’s different about this year’s Social Security discussion? For the first time in 25 years, there’s talk about expanding benefits. The Great Recession eroded all hope that home equity and 401(k)s will secure retirement. More people are going to be old and predictions are that the poverty rate among the elderly will go up. That means tens of thousands of people over 65 will be poor, and we will reverse the gains we made when Social Security was passed.
Do the media recognize this? The media are incoherent about retirement policy. There are two worlds here. One is the personal finance and upbeat reporters who write about what people should do—-how to avoid taxes, how to save more. There seems to be an endless appetite for stories about securing your retirement. The other world is the national reporters who write about government policy. Here I’m often asked to discuss if Social Security is affordable and what would happen if Americans had to work until their late 60s and early 70s.
How would benefits be expanded? Expansion would most likely come by increasing the minimum benefit so that all beneficiaries would get payments that at least get them to the poverty line. [Emphasis added: Proposals to strengthen Social Security are not about enhancing “Golden Years” lifestyles, but would elevate very poor people from exceptional poverty, especially older women and ethnic elders.]
What were the major take-aways from your recent study? There’s a generation of near-retirees, age 55 to 64, who will be worse off than their parents or grandparents in terms of maintaining their standard of living in retirement. Sources of income are more limited and less secure because they are financialized—-they’re attached to stock and bond markets. The innovations in finance unfortunately let people use their house and pension plans like an ATM for current spending when they should have used it for retirement security. Today, 38 percent of people entering retirement have a mortgage on their house; 30 years ago it was less than 20 percent. Student loans are also contributing. Mothers are more likely to use their savings to help their children pay off college debt. Our study showed that households without financial assets and those with IRAs and 401(k)s are equally likely to be poor or near poor older adults.
When will this really become a story? When the baby boomers get poor, then elder poverty will be big news—in about five years.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Tortured, Jailed Black Seniors Released–But Denied Social Security,” by Frederick H. Lowe, NorthStar News Today/New America Media, (April 21): Chicago’s agreement last week to pay once-tortured, wrongly convicted black men $5.5 million, still leaves them with no Social Security retirement income. Police brutality and prosecutorial misconduct become an issue in aging. Lowe wrote this supported by the Journalists in Aging Fellows program, a collaboration of New American Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) with support from the Silver Century Foundation, and in association with the Journalists Network on Generations, publisher of GBONews.org.
*** “GENTRIFIED: Gentrification Takes Toll on Oakland Seniors,” by Laura McCamy of the independent news nonprofit Oakland Local is the first segment of an ambitious five-part series on how the San Francisco Bay Area’s tech boom has only intensified the struggles of low-income and working class retirees, especial those who are black, Chinese or from other ethnic backgrounds. Reporters in other parts of the nation who are covering social issues in aging can learn a lot from McCamy’s in-depth reporting on unaffordable “affordable” housing, the limits of nonprofit interventions and so on. The series also had support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows program of NAM and GSA, with funding from AARP, with a helping hand from GBONews. See the series on NAM’s special website, “Growing Older, Getting Poorer.” The series ran March 23-27 on Oakland Local and April 1-5 on NAM.
*** “We Need a Role-Reversal in the Conversation on Dying,” by V.J. Periyakoil, MD, New York Times “Opinionator” (April 22). She writes, “… When it comes to planning for the end of life, we need a role reversal. The patient — you — may have to take the lead in conducting end-of-life conversations. While this may seem surprising, remember that dying is essentially a social and intimate family event that has become overly medicalized in the past century.” Periyakoil, of Stanford University Medical School, wrote the Times essay based on research by her and colleagues also published yesterday in the science journal, PLOS One, titled, “No Easy Talk: A Mixed Methods Study of Doctor Reported Barriers to Conducting Effective End-of-Life Conversations with Diverse Patients.” The Times essay comes with a video of a patient. GBONews readers can also read about Periyakoil’s Stanford Letter Project.
*** “Medicare Considers Changing Hospice Care Policy,” by Susan Jaffe, USA Today/Kaiser Health News: Jaffe reports that although patients enter Medicare hospice care when doctors determine they have six or fewer months to live, thus forgoing curative treatment, “they are also still allowed Medicare coverage for health problems not related to their terminal illness, including chronic health conditions or for accidental injuries.” Medicare is considering placing all charges under the hospice program.
But, Jaffe writes, “Seniors’ advocates are worried that putting all coverage under the hospice benefit will create obstacles for patients. Instead, Medicare should go after hospice providers who are shifting costs to other providers that Medicare expects hospice to cover, said Terry Berthelot, a senior attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, who urged the government to protect hospice patients’ access to non-hospice care.”
*** “The Medical System May Treat You Well, But Less So After You Reach Age 80,” by geriatrician Louise Aronson, Washington Post (April 6) recounts how Aronson, who directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center at the University of California, San Francisco, went to the aid of a woman, who had propped her cane on her walker at curb near a medical clinic, as she tried hailing a cab.
Aronson writes, “It didn’t take a rocket scientist — or even a geriatrician — to figure out why taxis didn’t want to pick up this elderly woman. Doctors and medical practices often invoke the same reasoning: The old move too slowly, making efficiency impossible. And more often than not, there are complications.”
She concludes, “Those who argue that health care consists primarily of prescriptions and procedures, or treatment of body parts and diseases, have created a system that prioritizes medicine to the detriment of patient health. It’s time we took a broader view of health care, one that puts the well-being of patients first and trains and rewards clinicians who work with patients, caregivers, and other health professionals to achieve that goal.”
WaPo excerpted Aronson’s article from the Narrative Matters section of the journal Health Affairs.
*** “Caring for Mom & Dad,” produced by Larkin McPhee for WGBH Boston and narrated by Meryl Streep, will be broadcast on PBS on Thurs., May 7, 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET. (Check local listings though.) The hourlong program
is the latest PBS effort to explore the many daily challenges caregivers face, in this permutation through the experiences of eight multicultural families. On screen discussion her experiences is former New York Times gen-beat reporter, Jane Gross, author of A Bittersweet Season: [http://tinyurl.com/3ejlljs] Caring for Our Aging Parents–and Ourselves (Random House, 2012). She states in the production, “Your mother or your father better have a gazillion dollars, or by the time this is over, mom and dad are broke, and so are you. The documentary, funded by AARP and Pfizer, also will be accompanied by a substantial website by Executive Producer Meredith Nierman and Producer
Ayelet Ronen. View the trailer (1:50 mins.) and reporters can access a full screener and photos. You have to register for the screen, but if you have problems or just need more information, contact Eileen Campion, Roslan & Campion PR, eileen@rc-pr.com; 212-966-4600.
The press release quotes the program’s WGBH Executive Producer Laurie Donnelly saying, “Caring for Mom & Dad builds on the 2008 critically acclaimed Caring for Your Parents, looking at how these challenges play out at home and at work.” The site for the new program does include a link to that production, but PBS might also reference 2002’s two-hour program on caregiving, “And Thou Shalt Honor,” produced by Dale Bell and Harry Wiland, with a companion book edited by Beth Witrogen McLeod, website, and over a dozen follow-up local town hall meetings around the country done in conjunction with local PBS stations and regional nonprofits.
And that leads to the next story on “The Storyboard.”
*** Homes on the Range on PBS Stations Through May: As GBONews previously noted, Dale Bell, Harry Wilend and Beverly Baroff will see public TV stations broadcast their latest hourlong production the development of an alternative to nursing home care. Homes on the Range shows how one community on the American prairie town, Sheridan, Wyo., spent years fighting, fundraising and lobbying to build one of Dr. Bill Thomas’ Green Houses. Although these more residential and humane homes can visibly revive sometimes depressed and declining elder, to the relief of family caregiver, the film documents the legal, legislative and financing twists and turns community people must go through to open the doors of a Greenhouse. Read more about their impact in a recent New York Times column by Jane Brody. For more information about the program and list of local dates, contact Bell at dale@mediapolicycenter.org; work: 310.828.2966; cell 818.398.4562.
*** “How Long Are You Likely to Live?” and “The Power of Positive Aging,” both by Flora Davis, Silver Century Foundation website. In the first, Davis provides a good overview, citing such sources as Thomas Perls, MD, who directs the New England Centenarian Study; CDC stats on racial and ethnic longevity in the United States; the Wilder Foundation’s 2010 report, “Unequal Distribution of Health in the Twin Cities”; among others.
In the second piece, Davis provides an overview of studies by Yale psychologist Becca R. Levy, PhD, best known for her 2002 study showing that people who reached old age with a negative view of aging died 7½ years sooner than those who looked forward to their later years. Reporters interested in this research on ageism and longevity will find Davis’ provides a helpful overview of Levy’s studies up to 2014.
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