GBO NEWS: Age-Reporting Program Names 10 Continuing Fellows; GOP Proposes Social Security, Medicare Cuts–Following Conservative “Leninist Strategy”; NYT Exposes Medicare Advantage Fraud; New Books—”Retirement Reboot,” Longevity Lessons from “Methuselah’s Zoo”; Exam Room Ageism; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations.
October 20, 2022 — Volume 29, Number 12
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. 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. NOTE ALSO: Some news links below hit paywalls and are inaccessible without subscriptions, although a number of those do allow free access to the first few stories.
In This Issue: Don’t Live by Bread Prices Alone: Vote Your Future.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** Journalists in Aging Fellowships Pick 10 Continuing Fellows.
2. THE STORYBOARD: *** “Entitlement, Spending Cap Plans Linked by GOP to Debt-Limit Deal,” by Jack Fitzpatrick, Bloomberg Government;
*** “Social Security Boost Will Help Millions of Kids, Too,” by Fatima Hussein, Associated Press;
*** “Young People Need to Fight for Social Security — Now More Than Ever,” by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, with his history of the conservative “Leninist Strategy” to undermine confidence in old-age programs;
*** “After Congress Fails to Add Dental Coverage, Medicare Weighs Limited Benefit Expansion,” by Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News;
*** “Say What? Hearing Aids Available Over-The-Counter For As Low As $199, And Without A Prescription,”by Phil Galewitz, also from Kaiser Health News;
*** “Chicago Sun-Times, fitting its new public-media ownership, is dropping its paywall,” by Joshua Benton, Harvard’s Nieman Lab.
3. MEDICARE’S DIS-ADVANTAGE AND THE HISTORY OF “DRG CREEP”: *** “‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions,” by Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times – Plus NYT companion story, “Curtailing Diabetes Required More Than Medicine,” by Roni Caryn Rabin.
4. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track,”by Mark Miller (Agate Publishing);
*** More on Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live (Morrow/HarperCollins);
*** “Methuselah’s Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives,” by Steven N. Austad, PhD (MIT Press);
*** Overtime: America’s Aging Workforce and the Future of Working Longer, edited by Lisa F. Berkman and Beth C. Truesdale (Oxford University Press).
5. AGEISM WATCH: *** That Doctor’s Name? Ageist: “Patients and Doctors on a First Name Basis,” by Gina Kolata, New York Times “Science Times.”
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Journalists in Aging Fellowships Pick 10 Returnees: GBONews.org’s September issue listed his year’s 16 New Fellows for the Journalists in Aging Fellowships. But also, we’ve selected 10 past participants in the program to return as Continuing Fellows.
Now starting the 13th year, the collaboration between the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and our Journalists Network on Generations (publisher of GBONews.org) will bring the total of 26 reporters to Indianapolis, Nov. 2-6, for GSA’s Annual Scientific Meeting, to research their stories among the almost 4,000 academic and professional attendees from 50 counties, many of whom will present the hundreds of presentations and papers on every current topic under the aging sun.
Getting called back this year are: Ruben Castaneda, U.S. News & World Report, Washington, DC; Cassie M. Chew, Independent Journalist, Chicago; Chelsea Cirruzzo, Axios, Washington, DC; Lois M. Collins, Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah; Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Rafu Shimpo (Japanese-American media) Los Angeles; Cecilia Hernandez-Cromwell, Telemundo Noticiero Oklahoma; Elissa S. Lee, OTD, OTR, (Southern California News Group); Margaret “Peggy” Sands Orchowski, PhD, The Georgetowner, District of Columbia; Lara Salahi, Gannett Media’s New England North Unit, Beverly, Mass; and Eduardo Stanley, Community Alliance/Nuestro Foro, KFCF 88.1 FM, Fresno, Calif. Each received a travel grant to attend the meeting.
This year’s “Class 2022-23” brings the program’s total to 217 reporters from over 150 mainstream news organizations, ethnic media, community and senior press outlets throughout the United States. To date they have generated more that 800 stories across most media platforms. (See our continuously updated list of published fellowship stories here.)
The Fellowship training program begins on Nov. 2, with a full-day seminar with sessions only for the reporters, before they attend full conference to research their proposed in-depth story projects.
Keynoting the Fellowship program will be Yale longevity researcher Becca Levy, PhD, author of Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live (Morrow/HarperCollins, 2022), based on her decades of research demonstrating the toll ageism takes on human health – routinely costing years of life. Panels will address the growing nationwide diversity of older Americans, looming retirement challenges for average (non-affluent) people, and critical policy questions for this rapidly aging country beyond the mid-term elections.
Among other speakers lined up are GSA President Peter A. Lichtenberg, PhD, director of Wayne State University’s Institute of Gerontology and co-director of Michigan’s Urban African American Aging Center; GSA CEO James C. Appleby, BSPharm, MPH; Gretchen Jacobson, PhD, VP, Medicare, The Commonwealth Fund; and Lehigh University’s Michael K. Gusmano, PhD, of the World Cities Project.
One of several veteran journalists slated to speak is Mark Miller, New York Times “Retiring” (“Social Security COLA”) contributor, and Reuters columnist. Miller’s new book, Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track (Agate) will be published this January. (See more on this in “The Bookmobile” section below.) Also on tap for the program will be Richard Eisenberg, “Unretirement” columnist for MarketWatch, co-host of the “Friends Talk Money” podcast, and former Managing Editor, PBS Next Avenue; and Fellowship Co-Director Liz Seegert, also editor of the Core Topic section on Aging, Association of Health Care Journalists.
The 2022-23 funders includes the Silver Century Foundation, John A. Hartford Foundation, Archstone Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, and the NIHCM Foundation, plus a generous contribution from John Migliaccio.
* GSA Media Registration Open: Complimentary registration is open for reporters wishing to attend the Gerontological Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting in Indianapolis, Nov. 2-6. Contact: Todd Kluss: tkluss@geron.org; (202) 587-2839. Attending reporters will be invited to attend the annual Journalists Reception.
2. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Entitlement, Spending Cap Plans Linked by GOP to Debt-Limit Deal,” by Jack Fitzpatrick, Bloomberg Government (Oct. 11, 2022): The Dek: “Key GOP members weigh Social Security, Medicare changes. Debt-limit deadline expected in third quarter of 2023.”
The Lede: “Social Security and Medicare eligibility changes, spending caps, and safety-net work requirements are among the top priorities for key House Republicans who want to use next year’s debt-limit deadline to extract concessions from Democrats.”
In a Nutshell: “The four Republicans interested in serving as House Budget Committee chairman in the next Congress said in interviews that next year’s deadline to raise or suspend the debt ceiling is a point of leverage if their party can win control of the House in the November midterm elections.
The Republican position — which members are still formulating — could set the stage for an explosive standoff next year, reminiscent of the 2011 negotiations when the Tea Party wave of Republicans took on the Obama administration over spending. It’s also possible Republicans will demand process-focused legislation — such as requiring a reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio — that could subsequently put major entitlement programs in play.”
Mid-Term implications: “’The debt limit is clearly one of those tools that Republicans — that a Republican-controlled Congress — will use to make sure that we do everything we can to make this economy strong,’ said Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) , the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. He’s seeking the top GOP spot on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee but said if he doesn’t get it, he’ll remain in his Budget Committee position. Reps. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), and Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) are seeking the top spot on the Budget Committee if Smith gets the Ways and Means role.
Those three agreed Republicans must use the debt-limit deadline to enact fiscally conservative legislation. Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), head of the Republican Study Committee’s Budget and Spending Task Force, also said the upcoming debt-limit deadline is “obviously a leverage point.”
Focus on Entitlements: “’Social Security and Medicare need to be addressed in the near future, some of the lawmakers said. “Our main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary — it’s got to be on entitlements,’ Carter said. . .‘Republicans have a list of eligibility reforms, and we don’t like the tax increases,” Arrington said. He said an increase in the eligibility age for both programs would be a commonsense change.’ Reducing benefits for wealthier Americans could also cut costs, Smucker said.
Some Specifics: “The Republican Study Committee, the largest group of House Republicans, released a budget plan in June that called on lawmakers to gradually raise the Medicare age of eligibility to 67 and the Social Security eligibility to 70 before indexing both to life expectancy. It backed withholding payments to those who retired early and had earnings over a certain limit.
“And it endorsed the consideration of options to reduce payroll taxes that fund Social Security and redirect them to private alternatives. It also urged lawmakers to ‘phase-in an increase in means testing’ for Medicare. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said the proposals constitute privatizing Social Security and ‘ending Medicare as we know it.’”
*** “Social Security Boost Will Help Millions of Kids, Too,” by Fatima Hussein, Associated Press (Oct. 10, 2022): The Lede: “Seventy-year-old Cassandra Gentry is looking forward to a hefty cost-of-living increase in her Social Security benefits — not for herself but to pay for haircuts for her two grandchildren and put food on the table. The three live in a Washington apartment building that houses 50 ‘grandfamilies’ — where grandparents take care of children who do not have parents present. Gentry, who took in her grandkids to keep them in a safe environment, says the boost in benefits will help her make ends meet.”
In a Nutshell: Social Security’s cost of living adjustment (COLA) is “not just old people who will gain. About 4 million children receive benefits, and an untold number of others also will be helped because they’re being cared for by Social Security beneficiaries, sometimes their grandparents. . . But in many ways, inflation hits older Americans harder than the rest of the population. Medical costs are a big part of the burden.”
In Fact: “Coupled with a decline in the Medicare Part B premium, the Social Security COLA will put more money in the hands of the 70 million Americans who receive benefits, including the growing number of grandfamilies like Gentry’s. According to the U.S. Census, in 2020, there were about 2.4 million grandparents responsible their grandchildren. . . While Social Security is generally regarded as a program for older Americans, it also is the nation’s largest children’s support program.”
And: “The National Institutes of Health reported last October that at least 140,000 U.S. children under age 18 had lost a parent or guardian due to COVID. . . . Grandparent caregivers are 60% more likely to live in poverty than are grandparents not raising grandchildren, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.”
*** “Young People Need to Fight for Social Security — Now More Than Ever,” by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times (Sept. 29, 2022): The Lede: The Pulitzer Prize-winning economics columnist writes, “One almost has to admire Republicans for the tenacity and determination with which they keep coming up with new ideas for hobbling Social Security. Just in the last few months, we’ve seen Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) propose sunsetting Social Security and Medicare every five years, along with other federal programs, to give Congress recurrent cracks at zeroing them out.
“Blake Masters, now the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, has proposed privatizing Social Security. “Get the government out of it,” he said in June, apparently unaware that a privatization plan crafted by President George W. Bush crashed and burned in 2005. Then there’s Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who proposed eliminating Social Security and Medicare as permanent programs and converting them to discretionary budget items that would have to be evaluated by Congress every year.”
In Fact: “Other than retirement plans, most families have “little or no retirement savings” and “nearly half of families have no retirement account savings at all, Monique Morrissey of the labor-supported Economic Policy Institute documented in a 2019 paper. . . As many as two-thirds of all seniors get 50% or more of their income from Social Security, and more than a third rely on the program for more than 90% of their income, according to one estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau. The program isn’t only for seniors, however. More than 3.8 million children ages 18 and younger receive benefits, . . . Benefits go to an additional 7.8 million workers with disabilities who have not yet reached retirement age.”
*** Got History?: Hiltzik’s story includes this background: “The program’s opponents have long seen this disconnect as a wedge with which to weaken the program’s popularity. Back in 1983, for example, the libertarian Cato Institute published a paper proposing a “Leninist strategy” to wage ‘guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it,’ and promote privatization in its stead.
“The authors, Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, were anguished over President Reagan’s failure to exploit Social Security’s 1982 fiscal crisis to privatize the program. They concluded that the reason was the program’s strong support among the powerful voting bloc of seniors, compounded by the indifference of younger voters. The answer, they concluded, was to undermine confidence in Social Security among the young. Their model was the Leninist movement’s ‘success in isolating and weakening its opponents.’”
Compared to What: Social Security’s Trustees “calculated combined costs for retirees, those with disabilities and their dependents this year at about 4.98% of an economy valued at $25 trillion. Through the turn of the century, that percentage will peak at 6.18% in 2075. . . U.S. spending on public retirement and disability programs, as a percentage of GDP, is significantly lower than that of other developed countries such as Japan (10.5% of its GDP), Germany (12.5%) and France (15.3%).”
One Solution: “The political challenge confronting the U.S. isn’t figuring out how to shrink Social Security, but how to improve it so it’s even more relevant to today’s workers, tomorrow’s retirees. Among the proposals is a bill dubbed Social Security 2100, introduced by Rep. John B. Larson and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, both Democrats from Connecticut.”
Hey, Kids: “’My concern is Millennials and Generation Z,’ Arnone [said William J. Arnone, chief executive of the National Academy of Social Insurance . . . , during a recent appearance on C-SPAN], referring to cohorts ranging from workers now entering their 40s down to those still in their early teens.’ The task, Arnone said, is to ‘let them know, “You will need this program as much as your parents. They had pensions; you don’t.’ That’s where the battle will be.”
*** “After Congress Fails to Add Dental Coverage, Medicare Weighs Limited Benefit Expansion,” by Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News (Oct. 17, 2022): The Lede: “Proposed changes in Medicare rules could soon pave the way for a significant expansion in Medicare-covered dental services, while falling short of the comprehensive benefits that many Democratic lawmakers have advocated.”
Why Not More?: “That’s because, under current law, Medicare can pay for limited dental care only if it is medically necessary to safely treat another covered medical condition. In July, officials proposed adding conditions that qualify and sought public comment. Any changes could be announced in November and take effect as soon as January. The review by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services follows an unsuccessful effort by congressional Democrats to pass comprehensive Medicare dental coverage for all beneficiaries, a move that would require changes in federal law.
And: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sought in vain to add that to the Democrats’ last major piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August. As defeat appeared imminent, consumer and seniors’ advocacy groups along with dozens of lawmakers urged CMS to take independent action. . . . Dr. Biana Roykh, senior associate dean for clinical affairs at Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine, called CMS’ proposal ‘a step in the right direction.’ But she cautioned that it doesn’t yet address the full extent of dental needs among seniors. ‘We’re not solving the problems upstream’ by tackling the causes of dental decay, including a lack of routine care, she said.”
*** “Say What? Hearing Aids Available Over-The-Counter For As Low As $199, And Without A Prescription,” by Phil Galewitz, also from Kaiser Health News (Oct. 17, 2022): “Consumers will be able to buy hearing aids directly off store shelves and at dramatically lower prices as a 2017 federal law finally takes effect. Where for decades it cost thousands of dollars to get a device that could be purchased only with a prescription from an audiologist or other hearing professional, now a new category of over-the-counter aids are selling for hundreds of dollars. Walmart says it will sell a hearing aid for as little as $199.”
*** “Chicago Sun-Times, fitting its new public-media ownership, is dropping its paywall,” by Joshua Benton, Harvard’s Nieman Lab (Oct. 6, 2022): The Lede: What happens when public media buys a private newspaper? It adopts a public media business model. Chicago Public Media made news in January by buying the Chicago Sun-Times, the city’s longtime tabloid alternative to the broadsheet Tribune. The Tribune has fallen into the cost-cutting clutches of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, so there’s very much an opening for a more public-minded player to make its mark …
“In 2018 — not long after being sold for $1 — it followed the newspaper crowd and put up a (non-bitcoin) paywall, at $7.49 a month. A paywall can be a tough pitch for a second newspaper in a market still full of relatively robust alternatives. The paper’s most recent filing with the Alliance for Audited Media, from March 2021, said the Sun-Times had about 28,000 digital subscribers, a number that doesn’t exactly set the heart afire. (It also claimed 63,000 daily and 70,000 Sunday print circulation.) So its new owners are doing the public-minded thing and dropping the paywall, replacing it with a public-radio-style membership program.”
Sun-Times CEO Nykia Wright, Executive Editor Jennifer Kho, and Chief Audience officer Celeste LeCompte announced that the new “membership program has a standard tier at $5 a month or $60 a year.” And, you guessed it GBO Newsies, members can carry around their papers (or story printouts) in a Sun-Times tote bag.
3. MEDICARE’S DIS-ADVANTAGE AND THE HISTORY OF “DRG CREEP”
*** “‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions,” by Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times (Oct., 9. 2022): (In the print National Edition, the investigation ran paired with the seniors’ booster-dose of the article, “Curtailing Diabetes Required More Than Medicine,” by Roni Caryn Rabin. See below.)
The Lede: “The health system Kaiser Permanente called doctors in during lunch and after work and urged them to add additional illnesses to the medical records of patients they hadn’t seen in weeks. Doctors who found enough new diagnoses could earn bottles of Champagne, or a bonus in their paycheck. Anthem, a large insurer now called Elevance Health, paid more to doctors who said their patients were sicker. And executives at UnitedHealth Group . . . told their workers to mine old medical records for more illnesses — and when they couldn’t find enough, sent them back to try again.
“Each of the strategies — which were described by the Justice Department in lawsuits against the companies — led to diagnoses of serious diseases that might have never existed. But the diagnoses had a lucrative side effect: They let the insurers collect more money from the federal government’s Medicare Advantage program.”
The Upshot: Says this NYT “Upshot” investigation, “The government now spends nearly as much on Medicare Advantage’s 29 million beneficiaries as on the Army and Navy combined … The additional diagnoses led to $12 billion in overpayments in 2020, according to an estimate from the group that advises Medicare on payment policies — enough to cover hearing and vision care for every American over 65. Another estimate, from a former top government health official, suggested the overpayments in 2020 were double that, more than $25 billion.”
Oversight vs. Undersight: “In contrast [to DOJ], , regulators overseeing the plans at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, have been less aggressive, even as the overpayments have been described in inspector general investigations, academic research, Government Accountability Office studies, MedPAC reports and numerous news articles, over the course of four presidential administrations. Congress gave the agency the power to reduce the insurers’ rates in response to evidence of systematic overbilling, but CMS has never chosen to do so.”
Washington’s Revolving Door: “Some of the agency’s top leaders have had close ties to industry. Marilyn Tavenner, a former C.M.S. administrator, left in 2015, then ran the main trade group for health insurers; she was replaced by Andy Slavitt, a former executive at UnitedHealth. Jonathan Blum, the agency’s current chief operating officer, worked for an insurer after leaving the agency in 2014, then became an industry consultant, before returning to Medicare last year.
“Ted Doolittle, who served as a senior official for the agency’s Center for Program Integrity from 2011 to 2014, said officials at Medicare seemed uninterested in confronting the industry over these practices. ‘It was clear that there was some resistance coming from inside’ the agency, he said. ‘There was foot dragging.’ There are signs the problem is continuing.”
GBONews Memory
This substantial exposé by two veteran NYT health care journalists brings this editor back 40 years to the awkward phrase “DRG creep.” Health care writers were soon search for simple phrases for explain what “Diagnosis Relate Groups” were.
In 1982, the Reagan administration adopted a still-incomplete block of research in New Jersey intended to categorize medical procedures in order to analyze hospital usage and project costs. Researchers, led by Yale, eventually came up with about 470 treatment categories. Certain medical procedures and practices are applied similarly for clusters of related ailments. With some exceptions called “outliers,” costs and recuperation times could ring up a price tag for each procedure, also accounting for regional difference in expenses. Medicare’s money nerds calculated a range of patient variations for each DRG, with some healing more slowly or speedily than others.
In seeing this “prospective payment” mechanism emerge as a way to control federal Medicare spending, rather than applying the original idea of it as a planning tool, the feds adapted the approach to replace open-ended traditional Medicare. While researchers in New Jersey awaited the experiment’s final results (Did it work? Did it save costs?), conservative politicians saw they could lay claim to potential budgetary cuts. They also saw to it that ongoing research about the new program’s effectiveness would be limited, but that’s another story of political opaqueness.
Because a hospital would only receive a set payment for each DRG, two striking terms soon emerged: First, hospitals elevated the once-lowly discharge-planner or care coordinator to get patients out of expensive facility beds “quicker and sicker.” Once stabilized, kind of, they could then recuperate in a nursing home or at home. Never mind that home and community based care funding remained vastly underfunded.
Second – and especially relevant here — salaries were elevated for computer savvy coding experts, who could bump up a diagnosis into a similar but more expensive category, a financial slight-of-broken-hand that was dubbed “DRG creep.” The NYT’s Abelson and Katz ably describe other factors regarding the emergence of Medicare’s managed-care Advantage programs. But the creepy price manipulation they dissect exposing fake sickness for cash, has an ignoble history in Medicare, going back four decades. Meanwhile, anyone for genuine price controls?
*** “Curtailing Diabetes Required More Than Medicine,” by Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times (Oct., 9. 2022): The Dek: “Now experts are calling for walkable communities, improved housing, and access to health care and better food, particularly in minority communities.”
by Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times (Oct., 9. 2022): The Dek: “Now experts are calling for walkable communities, improved housing, and access to health care and better food, particularly in minority communities.”
The Lede: This story, smartly juxtaposed with the “Cash Monster” exposé about Medicare Advantage excesses, begins, “Over the past 50 years, medical advances have led to a more sophisticated understanding of the causes of Type 2 diabetes and to an abundance of new tools for managing it. But better treatments have done little to stem the rise of the disease.”
The Stark Truth: “Researchers who study Type 2 diabetes have reached a stark conclusion: There is no device, no drug powerful enough to counter the effects of poverty, pollution, stress, a broken food system, cities that are hard to navigate on foot and inequitable access to health care, particularly in minority communities.”
A Quote: “’Our entire society is perfectly designed to create Type 2 diabetes,’ said Dr. Dean Schillinger, a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco. ‘We have to disrupt that.’ Dr. Schillinger and nearly two dozen other experts laid out a road-map for doing so earlier this year in a comprehensive national report to Congress on diabetes, the first of its kind since 1975. . . . Felicia Hill-Briggs, vice president for prevention at Northwell Health said, ‘Being born into poverty should not determine whether you have access to food, or green space, or an educational system that works.’”
Some Stats: “As of 2019, more than 14 percent of Native American and Alaska Native adults had diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The figure for Black and Hispanic adults was about 12 percent, compared with 7.4 percent for white adults.”
4. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track,” by Mark Miller (Agate Publishing, January 2023): The Chicago-based “Retiring” contributor to the New York Times and others national media and blogger of RetirementRevised.com will discuss his post-pandemic Retirement Reboot for older Americans now facing alarming levels of inflation. As the nation’s age 50-plus population faces, Miller considers both current financial concerns and “evergreen questions regarding how best to optimize their planning.” The book promises guide readers through practical strategies for improving the prospects of their post-career lives.” The book counsels those nearing retirement on how best to “think through the timing of retirement, optimize Social Security, navigate Medicare, build savings, and tap home equity.”
Reporters can request a media kit and review ebook or copy from Agate Publishing’s Jacqueline Jarik at 847-475- 4457 ext. 4# or at jarik@agatepublishing.com.
*** Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live (Morrow/HarperCollins, 2022), by Becca Levy, PhD: The Yale University behavioral psychologist has produced one of the more fascinating, research-based books on how age bias, both internalized and in social institutions and media, affect how long people will live, and how the most deleterious effects can be reversed. It was published last Spring, but journalists can request information and a review ebook or copy from Candacey.Jones@HARPERCOLLINS.com.
*** Methuselah’s Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives, by Steven N. Austad,PhD, MIT Press: In a recent book excerpt the distinguished gerontologist published in Salon, Austad states, “Everywhere on earth, people are living longer than ever before—on average. The fastest-growing age group is centenarians. . . It is also difficult to ignore the fact that the rate of life expectancy increase in the world’s longest-lived countries has slowed appreciably, even before we were blasted by COVID-19. Life expectancy in the United States, for instance, has not increased since 2015.”
And yet, writes Austad, “Recall that nature — in the guise of certain animals, such as birds, bats, and mole-rats — has repeatedly discovered how to deal with damaging free radicals much better than humans can. Other species (like elephants and whales) have developed dramatically better cancer resistance than humans. Still others, such as my beloved quahogs, have evolved ways to keep muscles strong and hearts beating for centuries. At some point, I am confident, the full armamentarium of the biomedical research enterprise will be deployed to study and eventually understand these lessons nature has to teach us about preserving and prolonging health.”
Austad is the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research at the University of Alabama, Birmingham andis founding director of UAB’s Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. For a review ebook or copy of Methuselah’s Zoo and press kit, contact Katie Lewis (lewisk@mit.edu) at MIT Press. He will present a free Zoom lecture on his book for the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) on Oct. 26, 4-5 p.m. Eastern.
*** Overtime: America’s Aging Workforce and the Future of Working Longer, edited by Lisa F. Berkman and Beth C. Truesdale (Oxford University Press, 2022): This scholarly tome, resulting from the decade-long research program on working longer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the book may be as up-to-date a background reference as reporters are apt to find on this crucial aspect of the emerging retirement crisis. Lisa F. Berkman, director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and Beth C. Truesdale, a distinguished research fellow there, have both written and pulled together a range of contributed essays from some of the top authorities at major academic institutions in the country.
Among the notable authors are Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution, who wrote on “Working Longer in an Age of Rising Economic Inequality,” and Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson on “The Biased Politics of ‘Working Longer'”. Others among the 14 chapter titles are: “When I’m 54: Working Longer Starts Younger Than We Think,” “The Geography of Retirement,” “The European Context,” “The Link Between Health and Working Longer: Disparities in Work Capacity,” and “The Psychology of Working Longer.”
Journalists may request a review copy and media kit from Sarah.humphreville@oip.com.
5. AGEISM WATCH
*** That Doctor’s Name? Ageist: In her story, “Patients and Doctors on a First Name Basis” (New York Times “Science Times” section, Oct. 18, 2022), the usually astute Gina Kolata examined the common formality among physicians to address their patients as Mr., Mrs. or Ms., to denote a stethoscope’s length of professional respect in the doctor-patient relationship. Koltata reports on a recent University of California, San Francisco, study that examined exceptions in both directions, such as with doctors or patients using first names more with women, as “a subtle but important form of unconscious bias,” according to a doctor she quotes.
Oddly, though she ends the piece without writing the name of a most particular kind of bias that her story describes in all-too-familiar detail. Kolata cites a year-2000 survey in which 61% of physicians expressed annoyance with patients calling them by their first names.
She goes on to quote Debra Roter, DPH, an emeritus professor of health, behavior and society at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, who comments that while the professional’s irritation at the professional breech is understandable, the greater consequence may be for patients when a doctor addresses them by their first names—or worse.
Stating, “It could infantilize the patient or establish the paternalism of the doctor,” Roter recalled her experience with a new practitioner, who approached the – again — emeritus (read: older) patient with, “Oh hello dear. Please come up to the table.” The story ends, “I was almost like, ‘Do I know you?’” Dr. Roter said. “I never went back.”
What’s in a name? For an article about bias and respect, the name for this doctor is strangely omitted – Ageist.
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 2022 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
To subscribe for free or unsubscribe, or if you have technical problems receiving issues of GBO or if you’d like to be removed from the list, e-mail me at paul.kleyman@earthlink.net, or pfkleyman@gmail.com or phone me at 415-821-2801