I write a "New Wrinkles in Aging" column for the Albuquerque Tribune. It appears the third Thursday of the month. Here is today's:
[Head = I'm chapped that health care is now us vs. them.]
We were in Roy, the dust-bowl town, talking with elderly ranching folks about the Great Depression. And they spoke about FDR and the New Deal exactly the way my family used to in Brooklyn, New York. Thankfully.
"Wow!" I thought. "Geography doesn’t count. It’s when we were born. And the tough times we shared."
That happened about 10 years ago. I was reminded of it by a new "Wow!" moment.
Last month, you see, I lambasted AARP here for betraying seniors to the drug industry. Several readers emailed comments and one - whose name and address I (sob) have lost- mailed me an article by Steve Chapman, "Meet the Greedy Grandparents," from slate.com. Chapman writes for the Chicago Tribune.
Wow! What a vision! Chapman says America’s elderly "never had it so good," we are politically powerful, but insatiable: "It’s not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free."
Then he whirls, targeting boomers: "It’s not just the interests of old coots that are being served here," he says. Boomers, he beefs, are selfishly indulging "the grizzled ones" and feathering their own nests. He figures the "Me Generation" will have its way, with the nation spending billions on them, only to have their own kids reap the whirlwind.
Forget politics. Forget conservative, liberal. Let’s look deeper, at what Chapman assumes about the world, starting with "government."
Clearly, he believes government is "them." And it’s just awful, he thinks, that we spend years "supported" by "them." Hmm. I’d bet my bottom dollar (only inches from my top dollar) that he doesn’t oppose subsidizing corporations. But I digress. The point is that we who lived the Depression and World War II saw government helping individuals.
Chapman notes that the growth in Washington’s spending on health is due to mostly to "rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population." True, but why? He never asks. A natural phenomenon, like earthquakes? Nothing to be done? His failure to wonder why tells me that he accepts the status quo - corporate ownership of the nation – and may even think it’s God-given. No surprise, then, that he doesn’t quarrel with turning health care into a business.
We "coots," however, remember when MDs, not MBAs, ran health care. As guild professionals, they offered humane, personal medicine, lots of it pro bono. Norman Rockwell GPs may never return, but why can’t our government rein in corporations? We are the only modern industrial nation that doesn’t.
You’re smiling. Yes, I did write "our government." Well, once upon a time, Washington, D.C. responded to the middle class and the weak.
Chapman may not speak for the majority, but he’s hardly alone. Millions have been infected with the delusion of the "free market." Hobbes – the pessimistic philosopher, not the cartoon tiger – is back in favor. Mind you, if Chapman assumes society is only a brutish struggle, I do not fault him. Hey, he’s 49. (I emailed him.)
But older Americans remember when, even in the depths of poverty, money wasn’t everything.
And that we were close. In this together. In the same boat. Americans. Yes, there was community forged in the Great Depression and World War II.
That was a long time ago, I know, but I don’t think it’s gone forever. The pendulum will swing.
Wow! Hope it doesn’t take another Depression.
Alpert’s new web log is www.alpertstruth.com.