New Orleans As my companera says, “Getting old? That’s the goal!” Indeed, it is, but as anyone with serious time of the clock will admit, it comes with a price, even in the best of situations. You lose a step. Names are no longer on instant recall. The gym can’t make ice cream and apple fritters disappear overnight any more. Anyone can add to this list, but it also turns out that with every year, the elderly are increasingly seen as easy marks.
In our house, we have annual physicals. That’s just common sense. That doesn’t stop our primary care hospitals from barraging us with emails, phone calls, and more in trying to get us to come see them for a blood pressure check or whatever whenever. Mi companea almost agreed to go in for the needless check to get her hospital off the phone when they wanted to do a home visit. They even lied that these so-called “wellness” visits were “required by Medicare” in complete balderdash, rather than just being part of their financial business model to lard up their payments from the federal government.
More, much more is coming. The attack by the Trump administration on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has been one of the few bulwarks of defense in preventing the hundreds of millions of scams of the elderly is very bad news. There are whole buildings full of people in Myanmar and along the Thai border that specialize in boiler room activity to fleece the elderly and unsuspecting, seemingly ignored, if not enabled by their governments.
Hackers are also logging success at hitting nursing homes and other senior care and senior residential locations and stealing all client personal data. Some have been hit by ransomware gangs and their shakedowns. Many of these outfits have unsophisticated and out of date computer systems, making the work easy for these operators. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, once hit, too many of the companies take way too long to notify clients and families that the data has been stolen, adding insult to injury, with the damage already done.
The growth of for-profit hospitals has also been a source of many cases of elder abuse. The Times reports that inspections by federal authorities required by Medicare that include instances of neglect and abuse are often impenetrable or hidden from the public and go unpenalized. They highlighted the biggest player in this field:
Encompass accounts for about one in seven rehab facilities nationally, but owned 34 of the 41 inpatient rehab facilities that Medicare rated as having statistically significantly worse rates of potentially preventable readmissions for discharged patients. (Overall, rates of readmission after discharge ranged from 7 percent to 12 percent, with a median of 9 percent.) And it owned 28 of the 87 rehab facilities — 65 of which were for-profit — that had worse rates of potentially preventable readmissions to general hospitals during patient stays. (The median for these kinds of readmissions was 5 percent, and rates for individual rehabs ranged from 3 percent to 9 percent.)
None of this counts the daily grind for many elderly, especially with lower or fixed incomes, when it comes to community safety, access to transportation and other services, including public health, adequate food, and affordable housing. The elderly are even being asked to shoulder the blame for Trump’s big bad budget bill, even as it privileges to rich, because their rising numbers mean that Social Security and Medicare absorb so much of the budget. Conservatives are beating down the door to push their income and healthcare farther down the list of budget priorities. If Trump says children need fewer dolls, too many of MAGA advisors seem to be saying we have too many old people who are taking up too much space and money.
Elderly Americans deserve attention and protection. They shouldn’t be ignored. Politicians may see them as easy voting prey as well, but as more of these attacks on seniors continue, maybe they should remember older voters still vote like crazy. Voting is something they still remember is important.