GBO NEWS: Journalist in Aging Fellows Deadline; Senior Workers at Senate; ACA’s Wrong Prescription; & More
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Aug. 1, 2015 — Volume 15, Number 11
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 articles 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: No Restrictions Apply.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** Deadline for Journalists in Aging Fellows, Aug. 21:
2. GOOD SOURCES: *** Justice in Aging Tool Kit Dissects ACA’s Dual-Eligible Demonstrations in 11 States; *** “Caregiving in the U.S. 2015” Updates Facts, Trends on Family Care
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Author Michael Hiltzik Goes from The New Deal to Big Science; *** Magazine Lists Ashton Applewhite on a list of 100 Inspiring Women for Her Fight Against Ageism.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: *** Retirement-Finance Columnist Kerry Hannon Testified on Older Workers Before U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging
5. THE STORYBOARD: *** “50 Years of Medicare,” by Susan Jaffe, The Lancet;
*** “The Next 50 Years for Medicare and Medicaid,” four commentaries right and left in the New York Times;
*** “Will Commercialization Be Obama’s Legacy on Aging?” by Paul Kleyman, New America Media and AlterNet;
*** SERIES ON BOSTON’S ELDER HOUSING CRISIS by Sandra Larson: “Rents Put Squeeze on Black, Chinese Elders,” and “Gentrification Hits Elders on Housing Costs,” in Bay State Banner and New America Media;
*** “A New Chapter in the Fight for Fair Housing,” by Andre Shashaty, Huffington Post;
*** “Wrong Prescription? The failed promise of the Affordable Care Act,” by Trudy Lieberman, Harper’s.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Application Deadline for Journalists in Aging Fellows, Aug. 21: We proudly announce the sixth year of the Journalists in Aging Fellows program, a collaboration between the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and New America Media (NAM), in collaboration with the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publisher of GBONews.org. Launched in 2010, this fellowship for working journalists will continue especially thanks to renewed funding support from the Silver Century Foundation.
The centerpiece of the program will be the fellows’ participation in GSA’s Annual Scientific Meeting, which will take place in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 18-22 (the week before Thanksgiving). The fellowship requires participating reporters to deliver a story from the conference plus an in-depth piece or series in the following months.
The fellowship includes a substantial stipend plus travel expenses to the GSA conference, which reporters attend for at least two days to research their stories.
For the past five years, this co-venture — responsible for more than 300 news stories by 84 alumni to date — has largely centered around GSA’s Annual Scientific Meeting and in-depth stories proposed by each fellow.
As in previous years, half of the fellows will be selected from general-audience media and half from ethnic-media outlets that serve audiences within the United States. Previous fellows, including freelancers, have worked with mainstream media, for instance, US News & World Report and public radio stations from Alaska to Texas to New York, as well as ethnic media, such as La Opinión in LA and Sing Tao Daily or the Irish Echo in NYC. Many fellows have also been with news dailies, online sites or magazines nationwide.
This year, on arriving in Orlando, the fellows will participate in a workshop the day before the GSA meeting begins. This session will showcase research highlights from the meeting and host discussions with veteran journalists on how to position aging stories in the current media environment. There will also be daily media briefings during the conference.
All applications for the fellowship program will be reviewed by a selection committee of journalists and experts in aging. The criteria will include clarity and originality of proposed in-depth story projects; quality of samples of published or produced work; and high-impact potential of proposals geographically and across different ethnic or racial populations. As noted above, the 2015 application deadline is Friday, August 21.
Visit the fellowship website for a complete description of the program requirements and a continuously updated list of fellowship stories.
New America Media is the national news service for ethnic and community media. This past year fellows have produced terrific stories and series on such subjects as the impact of gentrification on seniors in Oakland and Boston, elderly refugees in Indiana, retirement living challenges for Asian Indian seniors here, rural aging in Washington State, elder care in New York City, older black prisoners released with little help in Chicago–and many, many more. (The stories are also cross-posted on NAM’s “Elders” website, with links back to the original versions at each reporter’s publication or radio station.)
GSA, which is an academic society, not a lobbying group, is the nation’s oldest and largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to research, education and practice in the field of aging. The principal mission of the 5,500-member nonprofit is to advance the study of aging and disseminate information among scientists, decision makers, and the public. GSA publishes some of the leading peer-reviewed journals in aging, which provide first-rate source material and leads on experts for reporters.
The program is co-directed by Todd Kluss, GSA’s senior manager of communications, and GBONews Editor Paul Kleyman, also senior editor of NAM’s ethnic elders newsbeat and national coordinator of the Journalists Network on Generations.
Those with questions can contact Paul at NAM: (415) 503-4170 ext. 133; e-mail: pkleyman@newamericamedia.org, or Todd at GSA, (202) 587-2839; tkluss@geron.org. Again, check out the fellowship website for details.
2. GOOD SOURCES
*** ACA’s Dual Eligible Demonstration Tool Kit: Reporters covering health and aging likely know that one of the more challenging and costly populations are the “dual-eligibles,” very low-income seniors and people with disabilities, who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established the Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office, to better align Medicare and Medicaid benefits through state-run dual-eligible demonstrations.
Pilot program like this offer some of the more promising aspects of ACA–with the promise of answering what has been for decades this nation’s TCTC system of long-term service and supports — that is, Too Cheap To Care. A useful new online “tool kit” outlines in a well written six-page Issue brief key concerns that have emerged in the programs. The guide, from Justice in Aging (JiA, formerly the National Senior Citizens Law Center) distills lessons from 11 demonstration states, such as California, Texas, Michigan and New York.
Be sure that when you get to the introductory page don’t just link to the new six-page tool kit, but also click on the four at the bottom of that page with details on appeals, outreach and notices, continuity of care and consumer protections, and Medicare savings programs. JiA is one of the strongest consumer advocacy groups in the country and has developed among the best-written background papers on this and related topics. (Their tag line is “Fighting Senior Poverty Through Law.”)
Why is care coordination crucial for dual-eligibles (sometimes called “Medi-Medis”)? In a story this editor wrote last summer for New America Media, Los Angeles geriatrician Esiquio Casillas, MD, astutely described some of the stressful and wasteful situations in the current system that he and other health care providers hope will end with the new, coordinated-care approach.
Casillas, regional medical director for Senior Services at AltaMed’s a community clinics in Southern California, spoke at media briefing NAM organized for ethnic news reporters and community seniors (sponsored by California’s health department). He said that the new demonstration programs are modeled on PACE (Program for All-Inclusive Care of the Elderly), although geared specifically for dual-eligbles.
He emphasized, “With just the Medicare benefit, if you’re working with a patient with diabetes, you can’t really manage them appropriately unless you can address their nutrition – unless they actually have a working refrigerator, unless they have some kind of access to healthy meals. Same thing with high blood pressure and other types of heart diseases.”
Similarly, Casillas said, well-coordinated care between the badly coordinated Medicare and Medicaid programs should help dementia patients harmonize their medical care with caregiver support services at home. If the services aren’t coordinated with a provider and the medical system, he stressed, they won’t be part of a truly effective care plan.
For Medicare and Medicaid programs — this week celebrating their 50th anniversary, like siblings with serious rivalry issues — the lack of patient-centered care has been harmful to millions and swept under the rug over the decades by thousands of politicians of both parties.
With its guides and programs Justice in Aging aims to protect dual eligibles entering these new programs “by ensuring they are adequately informed of care changes; they retain access to doctors of their choice; they maintain services and care without disruptions; and they get help navigating an appeals system that honors their due process rights.” Currently, 11 states are in various stages of implementing the demonstration.
When one hears candidates like Jeb Bush trying to one-up Trump by announcing that we need to get rid of Medicare (presumably replaced with vouchers for buying insurance), it’s essential for reporters to know where the main cost centers are and what questions to ask about how to reduce expenses — with better care, not less care.
*** “Caregiving in the U.S. 2015” is the latest update on elder care in the United States, from the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP Public Policy Institute.
The study provides new analyses of higher-hour caregivers (one-third give at least 21 hours of care a week), caregivers ages 75-plus, multicultural caregivers (including African American/black, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian American/Pacific Islander populations), and the challenges facing caregivers in the workplace.
A release on the report notes, “Caregivers represent the growing diversity of the U.S. –nearly one quarter of caregivers are Millennials, and 40% are men.”
The paper documents the declining availability of family caregivers to provide long-term services and supports using a “caregiver support ratio,” that is, “the number of potential caregivers ages 45-64 for each person age 80 and older.” It also shows “the dramatic widening of the care gap nationally” as boomers age into their 80’s, beginning in 2026.
Among other highlights are that:
- 60% of caregivers are female, typically a 49-year-old woman caring for female relative of 69, most likely her mother.
- 34% of caregivers have a full-time job, while 25% work part time. Caregivers who work do so for 34.7 hours per week on average.
- Caregivers have been caring for four years on average, spending 24.4 hours per week helping with activities like bathing, dressing, housework, and managing finances.
- 38% of caregivers report high emotional stress from the demands of caregiving.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** From The New Deal to the Really Big Science: Pulitzer Prize winning business columnist Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times (LAT) is currently touring to particle-charge his new tome, Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex (Simon & Schuster). This should be great summer reading for buffs of history, technology and science that started the atomic age, and it’s getting nifty reviews (“Lucidly written,” said the New York Times book review).
If you were intrigued by last year’s discovery of the Higgs boson–the so-called God particle–using the Large Hadron Collider–the finding roots directly back Lawrence’s invention of the cyclotron in the 1930s.
Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times’ business columnist who also hosts LAT’s business blog, The Economy Hub, is one of journalism’s most knowledgeable analysts of Social Security, Medicare and related issues–the subjects of two of his six books. The other policy one is The Plot Against Social Security (Harper Collins, 2009).
But a guy needs some R&R from the deep trekking into the policy weeds. For Hiltzik, this is his third foray into Tomorrowland tech, with previous books on Hoover Dam and the dawn of the computer age.
He told GBONews that after finishing his 2012 volume, The New Deal: A Modern History (Simon & Schuster) he proposed book on the venerable E.O. Lawrence “with the thrust being a life and times examining [his] indispensable role in the bomb and his legacy as the creator, more or less, of Big Science via his invention of the cyclotron and creation of the lab” (now UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.).
Hiltzik noted, “I’d long been interested in Lawrence, and have a sort of hobbyists’ interest in physics and cosmology.” After reading a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Lawrence’s odd-couple frenemy, he said, “It occurred to me that [Lawrence] had been slighted—there was an authorized biography in the 60s, almost unreadable (though the transcripts of his interviews are all at Berkeley and very useful).” He added, “Turns out to be more fascinating than I even expected, which one likes in a book project.”
Release of the book this month, of course, coincides with the 70th anniversary (July 16) of the first detonation of the atomic bomb at Trinity site in New Mexico.
Next up, perhaps in 2018, Hiltzik it taking on J.P Morgan and his colossal battle with E.H. Harriman that helped trigger the Panic of 1901 and set forth the roller coaster that is modern Wall Street.
*** “This Chair Rocks” Blogger Ashton Applewhite reports her surprise this Spring at being named on a list of 100 inspiring women, along with the likes of Arundhati Roy, Jane Goodall, Rigoberta Menchu, Naomi Klein and Pussy Riot. The kudos are included in the slickly designed launch edition of Salt: The Compassionate Business Magazine.
Says Salt Applewhite is “standing up for an often ignored cause–ageism. She claims older people are habitually misrepresented through subtle discrimination and imagery, which unfairly distorts society’s perceptions. Ashton feels that institutional ageism makes people feel they are past their best when they are capable of providing for society in ways youth can only dream about.”
She e-mailed GBONews, “It’s very exciting to be recognized in this way, of course, and to see ageism recognized as a pressing human rights and social justice issue. I dyed my hair white. ‘Why’d you do that?’ asked my 92-year-old mother-in-law.” The short answer, said Applewhite, is “to see what it’s like. Longer answer, because of an aha moment: Covering the gray is one way we olders collude, en masse, in making ourselves invisible.” She’s advocating for a Year of Letting Our Hair Go Gray?
Applewhite, also a moti-age-inal speaker (and this editor is a pun-dit) has also published a new pamphlet and speaking series, “Who Me, Ageist? How to Start a Consciousness Raising Group.” In it she write, “Unless we confront the ageism in and around us, we lay the foundation for our own irrelevance and marginalization. The critical starting point is to acknowledge our own prejudices, because change requires awareness.”
We’ve often thought that the boomers would win the Longevity Revolution the day when Touch of Gray starts adding more salt, not just adding the pepper.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** “What I Told Senators About the Need for Older Workers” is retirement finance writer Kerry Hannon’s report on testimony she and others presented to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, June 24. Hannon, who is an author and regular freelancer for Forbes, the New York Times, AARP and others, filed this piece with the PBS Next Avenue website.
Although you can view a video of the hearing and download each speaker’s written testimony (often longer than what they had time to give vocally), Hannon, ever the meticulous reporter, did not merely recount her own testimony in the article, but she did a pretty good job of summarizing the hearing, including responses by the senators, such as Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
The hearing was titled, ”Work in Retirement: Career Reinventions and the New Retirement Workscape.” Others testifying were Sara E. Rix, for many years until recently the top analyst on older-worker issues at the AARP Public Policy Institute; Jim Godwin, VP of Human Resources at the older-worker friendly Bon Secours Virginia Health System; and Sue Nordman, owner of Erda Handbags. Her employees are mostly 60-plus.
In her testimony, Hannon emphasized, “The tough, sometimes heartbreaking, job challenges I’ve heard while traveling the country speaking to workers over 50 anxiously looking for jobs.”
Observing that older employees are staying longer in the workforce than before, Hannon cited figures showing that among workers 65 -69, the labor force participation rate rose from 18 percent in 1985 to nearly 32 percent in 2014. Although many older adults enjoy working and want to remain active while making a contribution, Hannon wrote that she and Rix concurred “that job loss, ill health and caregiving duties prevent some people in their 60s and 70s from working. They simply can’t find less demanding jobs, new career options, good part-time jobs or flexible schedules. And, we told the committee, negative attitudes about the cost of older workers and their technological competence persist.”
Reporters writing on retirement income should find the session a good update on older-worker issues. Hannon also records that attending the session besides Special Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Me., Ranking Member Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Warren, five other aging-committee members attended the hearing: Democrats Bob Casey, Pa.; Joe Donnelly, Ind.; and Tim Kaine, Va.. Republicans included rising conservative star Tom Cotton, Ark., and Ben Sasse, Neb.
5. THE STORYBOARD
*** “50 Years of Medicare,” by Susan Jaffe, the British journal The Lancet (July 30): “50 years later, the Social Security Amendments of 1965 provide health care for 55 million people older than 65 years or disabled receiving Medicare and nearly 73 million low-income adults, children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities receiving Medicaid, an optional programme also created under the same law. And in the process, the government programmes have transformed health care in the USA. Medicare is the nation’s largest single purchaser of health care, consuming 14% of last year’s federal budget, or US$505 billion.”
*** “The Next 50 Years for Medicare and Medicaid,” (July 30) includes four commentaries: “Medicare and Medicaid Need to Be Transformed,” by Yevgeniy Feyman of the conservative Manhattan Institute; “Affordable Care Act Health Care Has Already Helped Sustain Medicaid and Medicare,” by Jared Bernstein of the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; “Medicare and Medicaid Are Unsustainable Without Quick Action,” by Gail Wilensky, head of Medicare under Pres. George H.W. Bush; and “Groundless Fears About Medicaid and Medicare,” by Maya Rockeymoore, founder of Global Policy Solutions and former program and research director of the Congressional Black Caucus.
*** “Will Commercialization Be Obama’s Legacy on Aging?” by Paul Kleyman, New America Media, (July 17), coverage of the White House Conference on Aging. Also on Alternet.org.
*** SERIES ON BOSTON’S ELDER HOUSING CRISIS by Sandra Larson: “Rents Put Squeeze on Black, Chinese Elders,” Bay State Banner/New America Media. Boston’s African American South End and Chinatown have been hard hit as luxury units displace affordable apartments, forcing out many elders. And “Gentrification Hits Elders on Housing Costs.” As gentrification drives Boston’s boom, some elders are safe, but others find themselves vulnerable.
*** “A New Chapter in the Fight for Fair Housing,” by Andre Shashaty, Huffington Post. “As I document in my book, Masters of Inequality, elected officials and citizen activists have perfected a system that perpetuates discrimination in housing without leaving what I’ll call ‘racist fingerprints.’ They don’t talk about race, let alone fly a flag from a racist government. Thanks to a complicated system of land use regulation, zoning restrictions, and complex building codes, most new housing is simply too expensive for any more than a small number of African American households to afford.” A long-time journalist on affordable housing issues, Shashaty is founder and president of Partnership for Sustainable Communities. He’s also the author of Rebuilding a Dream: America’s New Urban Crisis, the Housing Cost Explosion, and How We Can Reinvent the American Dream for All.
*** “Wrong Prescription? The failed promise of the Affordable Care Act,” is Trudy Lieberman’s first major effort for Harper’s (July issue). Lieberman, a contributing editor on health and aging policy at the Columbia Journalism Review, is also author of Slanting the Story: The Forces That Shape the News (The New Press, 2000). At 9,000 words, “Wrong Prescription?” is as a disturbing a backgrounder on the problems of ACA as any reporter might find.
She writes, “Five years after its passage, the ACA is not only the most hotly debated and vituperatively denounced law of the era—it is still shrouded in a fog of controversy. Many Americans have no idea how the bill works or what it was designed to accomplish. In March, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found “significant” knowledge gaps in the public’s understanding of the law. A third of the participants were unaware of the law’s key provision: offering subsidies for the uninsured.”
Although the law has been a saving grace for millions of very low-income people (where states have opted to expand Medicaid), it has still left 37 million people uninsured and has left millions more middle-class Americans at the mercy of exploding cost increases in premiums, prescription drugs and other expenses now shifted from industry and lifted out of your wallet. Harper’s has also asked Lieberman, a former president of the Association of Health Care Journalists, to delve into Medicare, and we hope to report on its publication sometime next year.
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The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online with in-kind support from New America Media (NAM). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. NAM is an online, nonprofit news service reaching 3,000 ethnic media outlets in the United States. GBO News readers are invited to visit the NAM website, and click on the Ethnic Elders section logo on the right side. Opinions expressed in GBO do not represent those of NAM. Copyright 2015, JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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