GBO NEWS: Pennsylvania’s Real Winner; Reporters at Aging in America Meeting; Harry Potter & Daniel Ellsberg’s Doomsday Machine; Reporting Fellowships; Health Journalism 2018; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations — Our 25th Year.
March 16, 2018 — Volume 18, Number 4
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), 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. [paul.kleyman@earthlink.net]. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Black Holes Are Even Darker Now—Farewell Prof. Hawking.
- THE CONFERENCE BEAT: Aging in America Conference in San Francisco, March 26-29, including Diversity program and 15th Boomer Business Summit; Health Journalism 2018 in Phoenix, April 12-15.
- PENNSYLVANIA’S REAL WINNER: *** Keystone State Elects–Social Security, Medicare.
- EYES ON THE PRIZE—Application Deadline Reminders: ***Economics of Aging and Work Journalism Fellowship deadline, April 2; ***The Rosalyn Carter Journalist Fellowship in Mental Health, April 11.
- GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** CA Aging Commissioner Stuart Greenbaum and the Hollywood Initiative; *** Harry Potter & The Doomsday Machine (Very Scary Nonfiction by Daniel Ellsberg); *** Columbia Journalism Review’s Trudy Lieberman Recovering from Long Illness; *** The Beats Go On! 94th Birthday Shout-Out (March 9) to Author Herbert Gold, 99th for Lawrence Ferlinghetti (March 24).
- HEALTH CARE REFORM SCHOOL: *** “LTC Insurance & Financing Late-Life Care Needs,” Dr. Leslie Kernisan interviews Forbes columnist Howard Gleckman; *** NYT’s Ron Lieber examines Washington State’s bipartisan near miss on tax boost for LTC; MediCaring blog criticizes Fed program for Ignoring community-based care.
1. THE CONFERENCE BEAT
*** Aging in America (AiA) Conference in San Francisco, March 26-29: The American Society on Aging’s (ASA) annual AiA meeting will include 3,000 professionals in aging and present hundreds of sessions on a wide range of topics in aging, a veritable Trader Joe’s of stories and sources. As we previously noted, the program will have a modest press room set up (no coffee or morning bites), but GBONews is inviting gen-beat writers/producers to join us for a no-host (Dutch treat) dinner at the New Delhi Restaurant near the conference hotels. This will be on Wed., March 28, 7 p.m. (This date has changed from our prior announcement of that Tuesday.) Please e-mail me with a Yes or Maybe, if you’d like to join us, so I can tell the restaurant our group’s size. Let me know if you plan to join us at pfkleyman@gmail.com.
We’ll be toasting the Journalists Network on Aging’s (and GBONews’) 25th anniversary, since a group of reporters founded the network during ASA’s 1993 annual meeting.
To attend the AiA conference, Gen Beatles can apply for a complimentary media access pass at the conference home page. (Scroll to the bottom of ASA’s Aging in American conference main page.) The hundreds of sessions will span a very wide range of subjects, such as on the politics and policy of end-of-life care, the opioid addiction, malnutrition, and the growing incidence of malnutrition among seniors. Reporters can now access the 212-page conference final program online, as well as a 6-page summary of highlighted session.
*AiA will also include a Diversity Summit with the theme, “Inequality Matters: Focus on Diverse Caregiving Communities.” The AiA site states, “All caregivers matter—from grandparents caring for grandkids of opioid-addicted parents to immigrant homecare workers. The Summit reveals current caregiver statistics and proposed solutions for helping this crucial—and undervalued—workforce. Expert panelists from academia, research, public policy and direct services will define diverse caregiving communities, describe innovative programs created to support diverse caregivers and discuss legislation, policy and advocacy now on track to protect caregivers at home and in the workplace.” March 28, 1-4 p.m.
*Of special interest, the 15th Annual Boomer Business Summit on March 27-28, will bring together top leaders in businesses, nonprofits, analysts as well as journalists and authors to examine trends and developments concerning aging boomers and senior consumers. What’s Next will be held at the Parc 55 Hotel, four blocks from the San Francisco Hilton (AiA’s main conference venue).
For press credentials to attend What’s Next, contact event co-producer Lori Bitter, e-mail Lori@LoriBitter.com, or call 415-652-9884. (Bitter heads The Business of Aging and her book, The Grandparent Economy, came out last fall.)
The biz program will start Tuesday, March 27, with a pre-conference day of intensive workshops. It will kick off at 8:30 a.m., with a session titled, “Reinventing Your Careers at Midlife,” a conversation with Reuters columnist Mark Miller, author of Jolt: Stories of Trauma and Transformation (2018) in an interview with Chris Farrell of NPR’s Marketplace. (See our review of Jolt in the last issue of GBONews.org.) Next will come “In the Hallways: Shifting From the Big Job to Your Own Business,” with an expert panel moderated by Susan Donley, publisher of Stria, and also including authors John Tarnoff, (Boomer Reinvention/) and author Kerry Hannon (most recently of Great Jobs for Everyone 50+/) as well as being a columnist for Forbes and contributor to the New York Times. The morning program will wrap up with “The Art of Making it in the Gig Economy,” and will include Richard Eisenberg, managing editor of PBS’s Next Avenue. Tuesday’s afternoon sessions will include a range of intensive panels and speakers on developments in the market place.
Wednesday’s program (March 28), will include a Press Room and start with coffee and light breakfast. There’s too much content to go into much detail here, but GBONews readers should be able find innumerable stories about emerging products, services, people and expert analysis of all of the above showing how the business models and new technologies in aging are actually being implements (and what’s coming next in the marketplace).
What’s Next was founded by the event’s co-producer, Mary Furlong, CEO of Mary Furlong & Associates and author of Turning Silver into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplace (Financial Times Press, 2007).
*** Health Journalism 2018: The Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) is holding its national Health Journalism 2018 conference in Phoenix, April 12-15. Besides the usual range of provocative panels (“Right to Know Workshop: How to Unearth Facts in Today’s Washington”) and practical career sessions (sharpening your story-pitching skills), there will be quite a few panels on aging and disability, as well as on wider issues of particular interest to our aging population. Among them are “The Rise of Gene Therapy,” with a great panel moderated by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Karl Stark, along with others on medical marijuana, the future of single-payer health care, covering Medicaid, climate change, health disparities, immigrant health, the opioid crisis, the health response to mass violence and more.
Of particular interest on the generations beat are “The Increasing Demand for Palliative Care,” moderated by Liz Seegert, leader and editor of AHCJ’s core topic on Aging; “What Reporters Need to Know About the Changing Scene of Alzheimer’s Research,” with an expert panel moderated by Sabriya Rice, Dallas Morning News; “Cancer Basic for Reporters,” moderated by Matthew Ong, reporter for The Cancer Letter; “Will Congress Protect Medicare—or Overhaul It?” moderated by Erin Mershon, Washington, D.C., correspondent, Stat.
2. PENNSYLVANIA’S REAL WINNER
*** Who Won Pennsylvania’s 18 District Congressional Election? Whichever candidate tops the likely recount, Social Security and Medicare proved their power, as presumptive winner Conor Lamb made clear following his stunning upset in the otherwise deep-red southwest corner of the state. Speaking at a day-after rally, Democrat Lamb, 33, told the crowd that the voters across age groups—and party lines–responded positively to his support for the two social insurance programs.
The Washington Post’s David Weigel wrote (March 14), that weeks before the special election “Lamb released what proved to be a persuasive commercial in his likely upset. Against the backdrop of black-and-white images of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), an announcer warns that Republicans are ‘coming after Medicare.’ Lamb, off camera, said that Republicans viewed social insurance ‘as if it’s undeserved, or if it’s some form of welfare.’ On camera, he made it personal. ‘You know, I met a guy the other day who’s 65, and he’s taking care of his 14-year old niece, because there’s nobody else to do it,’ said Lamb. ‘And if you mess with his Social Security, he won’t be able to take care of her anymore. That’s all people want to do.’”
Ryan’s reaction to the upstart’s win? He claimed that both candidate’s “ran as conservatives” in favor of the Second Amendment and against House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. That is, he effectively took the position that Lamb is almost a Republican. If you can’t beat him, adopt him.
Meanwhile, heading toward the November mid-term election Democratic progressives and moderates are battling over whether the party will back candidates espousing centrist Pelosi-Schumer positions that play to the suburban middle or will do better with Sanders-Warren activists, who would energize the disaffected Dem base. Considering that those at the business-oriented center previously proposed comprising Social Security and Medicare, such as former President Obama did in seeking his Grand Bargain with the GOP, Lamb’s Pennsylvania quake (even if his opponent prevails by the skin of his teeth in the recount), may well bring the Dems fully back to full support for these party standards for economic and health security. Stay tuned.
3. EYES ON THE PRIZE
Application Deadline Reminders
*** Economics of Aging and Work Journalism Fellowship application deadline is April 2. This is a big one, offered by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. With its focus on the economics of aging and work in the United States, one reporter will be selected to live and work in Chicago for the 10-month fellowship period. Resulting stories will be distributed by AP to its global worldwide audience. The fellowship will begin this September. Also, applicants “must be willing to relocate to Chicago. Consideration may be given to a highly qualified fellow who wishes to work in Washington, DC, instead of Chicago. Relocation support is available. NORC will provide office space on the University of Chicago campus.” Details are at their website.
*** The Rosalyn Carter Journalist Fellowship in Mental Health program is accepting applications until April 11: Eight U.S. fellows will be awarded $10,000 each, plus two expense-paid visits to The Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga.
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Stuart Greenbaum is leading the recently launched the Hollywood Takes On Aging initiative of the California Commission on Aging. A commission member, the long-time Sacramento-based writer, editor and media maven headed the March 1 kickoff program in Los Angeles. It’s the latest effort over the years to “encourage Hollywood decision-makers to represent older adults with more authentic, non-stereotypic storylines and characters.”
A key supporter of the project is Carla Gardini, executive VP of Harpo Films. (You know, Harpo, Gardini’s boss Oprah’s name spelled backwards.) Gardini, a producer on such films as “The Hundred-Foot Journey” with Helen Mirren, and 2017 Emmy nominee, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” starring Oprah, penned a guest editorial last fall headlined “What is Hollywood’s Take on Aging?” in the aging commission’s AgeWatch newsletter. (Scroll down to page 3.) More on this in a coming GBONews. Meanwhile, those interested in the project can reach Greenbaum at 916-716-1310, stuart@greenbaum-pr.com.
*** The Beats Go On! A 94th Birthday Shout-Out (March 9) to author Herbert Gold ran on KALW’s daily Almanac. http://kalw.org/post/almanac-monday-31218. The station noted that in 1960 “he settled in San Francisco, where he became an important fixture in the literary scene. His many books of fiction, short stories, and essays include The Man Who Was Not with It (1956) and his latest [memoir], Still Alive!: A Temporary Condition (A Memoir) (2008).” Also, Gold’s 1969 novel, Fathers was a New York Times bestseller, and his most recent novel, When a Psychopath Falls in Love came out in 2015. Currently in-press is Gold’s latest, a chapbook of poetry. Better yet, Gold let me know the big news about his great-grandson having born on Sat., March 10. More on Herb @ www.herbertgold.com/about-native/. Meanwhile, his beat-era colleague, San Francisco poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, will turn 99 on March 24.
*** Harry Potter & The Doomsday Machine (Very Scary Nonfiction)
Pentagon Paper’s Whistle Blower, Daniel Ellsberg, noted last Saturday that he was little aware of Bloomsbury Press until the imprint agreed to publish his truly scary new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Ellsberg was speaking the salon of Tikkun Magazine Editor Rabbi Michael Lerner in Berkeley. Vigorous at age 87, Ellsberg is taking full advantage of a resurgence of interest in his anti-war efforts via depictions of him in the film “The Post,” as well as the 2009 Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Most Dangerous Man in America” (recently rebroadcast on CNN) and Ken Burns–Lynn Novick’s latest PBS series, “Vietnam.”
Lecturing and taking questions for about an hour, mostly while standing, Ellsberg looked trim wearing a blue suit and donning a red-and-blue tie beneath his neat but slightly frizzy snowcap of white hair. He explaining that he first hoped to expose the reckless U.S. nuclear-war plans soon after he leaked the Pentagon Papers. Back in the early 1960s, he and a colleague at the think tank Rand, where they did top-secret analysis of war-policy for the government, attended the then-new film “Dr. Strangelove.” Ellsberg recalls in all seriousness that on departing the theater the two agreed that Stanley Kubrick’s satire held more truth than fiction.
For decades, though, publishers until now have declined his book detailing how war-mongering egos at high military and political levels in both the U.S., and Russia–with India, Pakistan and other nuclear nations building capacity–could pretty much destroy humanity and other life on earth. His descriptions of the scientific evidence on resulting firestorms, nuclear winter (initially dismissed by some, but now accepted by scientists), and irresponsible notions of “tactical” uses of nuclear weapons, are unsettling to the core. Yet, in recent years military and political leaders have become increasingly belligerent in proposing that preemptive first strikes against presumed threats from other countries (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) are a valid saber worth rattling.
At one point Ellsberg noted that when Bloomsbury accepted the book, he asked a colleague about what else they’ve published and was told they put out the Harry Potter series. Pausing for a moment, he then chuckled, “Harry Potter & the Doomsday Machine.” With that, Hogwarts magically entered the realm of nonfiction—where Lord Voldemort is far from the scariest villain around.
During his Q&A with the standing-room crowd, though, Ellsberg, by then down to his light-blue shirtsleeves after shedding the formality of his jacket and tie, smiled with a qualified optimism about the potential for peaceful change. The worst hasn’t happened in all of these decades, and he’s been heartened by such unexpected developments in American culture that were considered impossible until very recently. Expressing excitement about the rapid rise of the #Me-Too movement for women’s equality and the broad acceptance of LGBT marriage, Ellsberg defended his positive hopes for the future in the face of looming self-inflicted extinction of the human race. He stated, “The not-impossible is what I work with.”
Maybe J.K. Rowling does have a bit of nonfiction magic in her Hogwarts wand. After all, she has said she partly based Harry’s bright companion, Hermione Granger, on the “heroines” of her youth, her aunt and the late muckraking journalist, Jessica “Decca” Mitford. [https://tinyurl.com/y9lgaqar].
*** Good News for Fans of Trudy Lieberman: Columbia Journalism Review’s prime health-policy blogger, Lieberman is recuperating back home after being felled last November by a mysterious infection that she’s now told resulted in an encephalitic brain infection. Lieberman, who spent a quarter century at Consumer Reports, becoming their chief investigative health editor, vows to start writing soon about the disarray she witnessed first-hand in the health care system. In a phone conversation, she emphasized the healing importance of unreimbursed comfort care from family and friends. Meanwhile, Lieberman is elated to be back in her Manhattan apartment with home cooking, after months of hospital food. (She’s a gourmet cook and former judge for the James Beard Cookbook Awards.) Sounding back in energetic voice, Lieberman said she soon hopes to get back on track investigating her latest update on hunger among older Americans. Lieberman’s recovery should be hastened by her anticipation be becoming a first-time grandmother this August.
5. HEALTH CARE REFORM SCHOOL
*** In the Jan.-Feb. 1994 issue of Aging Today, which GBONews.org’s editor piloted then, I recently found while paging back over old issues a story headlined, “Beyond Medicare: Creating a Long-Term Care System That Works.” And I have stories I did on this theme a decade before that. Now, decades later, the U.S. remains one of the few advanced economies around the globe that does not incorporate some form of continuing care for seniors and people with disabilities in its health care system.
Yet, today, most Americans still don’t understand that Medicare or their Medigap insurance policies do not cover the long-term, only short-range post-hospital care. Further, private long-term care insurance is so complicated and costly few have it, and our dysfunctional system offers little other help to those not already impoverished besides spending yourself down into poverty to qualify for Medicaid.
This dismal picture has not changed in the four decades I’ve been covering aging, well, except for at least a couple of things. First, private-equity investment firms, notably Blackstone, have gotten into the act Big Time. Exposés in the New York Times, and recently, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune have revealed that nursing home and assisted living chains bought up by private-equity have lower levels of staffing and caregiving resources than even for-profit homes used to.
Furthermore, the retirement of the huge Boomer generation is adding lots more people facing this issue. One upshot of the Longevity Revolution is that Boomer generation is the first for which a majority is seeing at least one parent live into their 80s, 90s or more. That includes a growing number of members of Congress and state legislatures. And some, at least, are beginning to respond as if they knew they have an older mother and father.
Help may be on the way, although not soon enough for many, according to a recent podcast, “Long-Term Care Insurance & Financing Late-Life Care Needs.” It is a one-hour-plus interview with journalist Howard Gleckman by Leslie Kernisan, MD, MPH. Gleckman, a columnist for Forbes and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, provides an authoritative overview of continuing shortfalls in U.S. protections for the booming number of people needing long-term care services and supports. His online talk is a check-in on the status of long-term care insurance (LTCI)—with its tightening restrictions, rising costs and shrinking product competition in recent years from over 100 insurers to about a dozen today. The result is a deepening gulf in American care for seniors and people with disabilities.
Gleckman, author of Caring for Our Parents, discusses the vast middle range of people between those who qualify for the Medicaid poverty program, and very wealthy individuals with $2 million plus. An Urban Institute study Gleckman worked on found that people ages 65 or older in the U.S. stand a 50-50 chance of needing high-level paid care after being hospitalized. And, he said, 75% will require at least some continuing care. (A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that about one-third of those 65-plus will do time in a nursing home.) On average, the Urban Institute study determined, people will spend $130,000 in lifetime costs for LTC in their later years. Currently, a skilled nursing home averages $85,000 a year, assisted living about $40,000 and home health care runs about $22 per hour.
Short of major action on the issue in Washington, he discussed possible interim solutions, such as implementation of an LTC-targeted payroll tax surcharge of 0.8% that could generate a modest supplemental benefit to help cover the extended-care costs of a nursing home, assisted living or home care. Gleckman readily acknowledged that the necessary bipartisan action on even an incremental change like this is unlikely in today’s Washington, D.C. But hold on to your IV bag; look at what just happened in Washington State.
Ron Lieber reported in his March 9 New York Times “Your Money” column, “For a few weeks this year, the rarest of things seemed like it was about to occur. A state, in this case Washington, was working to pass a bill that would institute a new payroll tax to help cover the cost of a much-needed service: long-term care in a nursing home, in a personal residence or elsewhere in the local community. Rarer still: At least a couple of Republicans, including one of the bill’s primary sponsors, supported the tax proposal.”
Under the bill, Washington State’s payroll tax would have tapped workers for another 0.49%, or $22.30 a month on average, Lieber explained, also noting that Washington has no state income tax, only a sales tax. In the end, AARP opposed the legislation, citing unanswered questions, such as who would be able to tap into the benefit and in what circumstances. The bill’s bipartisan sponsors have pledged to revise and reintroduce it in the next session. So—not impossible.
*** Drilling Deeper into Actual Care is Joanne Lynn, MD. She heads the MediCaring initiative of the nonprofit Altarum Institute and writers on long-term care should read her recent blog, coauthored by health-policy analyst Sarah Slocum, “Through a Glass Darkly.” The Feb. 22 post critiques the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for its recent evaluation of its Community-based Care Transitions Program (CCTP). Yeah, yeah, it’s down in the weeds, but reporters will find a lot of clear thinking and fodder for sharp questions of the fed’s premises underlying the care-transitions program.
Some GBONews readers will recall that an essential provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to reduced unnecessary re-hospitalizations within 30 days of a Medicare patient’s discharge. That’s been a critical goal both for cutting costs and reducing needless suffering.
But Lynn and Slocum assert that the program and CMS’s evaluation fall short of the program’s original impetus. That purpose was to improve the capacity of a patient’s community “to provide ongoing supportive services – disability-adapted housing, home-delivered nutritional food, the adequacy of the personal care workforce, employer flexibility for family caregiving, and more,” they wrote.
They explain that when the CCTP was adapted from the original Quality Improvement Organization project, the initial goal included measuring care-improvement activities on entire communities. But they comment, “CMS shifted the focus to a hospital-centric design and evaluated performance on a hospital-specific basis.”
That change eliminated assessment of where wheelchair rubber meets the community-care road, which is needed to “focus on what it takes to successfully shift the support of very sick and disabled persons to community service providers and reduce the challenges of living with ongoing serious illness.”
Lynn and Slocum stress, “We can accept that high re-hospitalization rates are probably evidence of shortcomings in a hospital’s discharge processes, and that mobilization of patients to take care of themselves gets us partway toward a better model of care. However, we should also include how communities and their social support organizations can improve access to adequate safe housing, nutritious food, reliable personal care, and other key services. That more complex model requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders, and measuring the performance of a complex, multi-faceted care system that serves similarly situated individuals across a geographic community — rather than just the re-hospitalization rates of certain hospitals.”
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2018 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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