Americans Are Living Longer, But Not Better

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Americans Are Living Longer, But Not Better

By Rick Weiss, Science Progress. Posted June 18, 2008.

It would be a horrible thing for people to gain extra years of life and wish, for lack of decent care, that they'd had an earlier exit.



Americans are living longer than ever, the government reported last week. But that seemingly good news (who wants to die young?) is more of a mixed blessing than might be apparent at first. That's because it does not address the quality of life during those added months and years of existence. In particular, it does not address our nation's ongoing failure to generate novel solutions to the problem of what to do with the quickly growing population of elders who cannot live independently and are in need of varying levels of long-term care.

Current estimates are that the number of Americans older than 85 will quadruple by 2050, to 18 million from today's four million. A huge proportion of these people will require some kind of ongoing help with the tasks of daily living. Yet as spelled out last year in a Center for American Progress report by Lisa Eckenwiler, "Caring About Long-Term Care," the vast majority of our elderly will not get the benefit of professional long-term caregivers because of the lack of resources or lack of available programs in their communities.

The worst thing that could happen is for people to gain extra years of life and wish, for lack of decent care, that they'd had an earlier exit.

In fact, 80 percent of the nation's long-term care is provided by unpaid caregivers, mostly family and friends. There are many obvious benefits of keeping at least a portion of long-term care in the family, but it is not practical in many cases to expect family members to be able to carry the entire burden. At least 60 percent of those unpaid caregivers are already busy with their own jobs.

Meanwhile, few employers offer assurances of help for employees who need to care for aging relatives. And the Family and Medical Leave Act, which assures up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for such purposes, still applies to only a fraction of employers and, if anything, has lately come under threat of being weakened by business lobbyists. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/88356/