Donna Shalala Keynote Speaker at Summit on Aging

Donna Shalala,Ph.D., giving her keynote address at Friday Summit Meeting on Baby Boomers and aging.

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 25, 2002 - Social security and Medicare programs must be dramatically upgraded and enhanced in order to meet the needs of the Baby Boomer generation that will soon swell the ranks of the senior citizen population, said Donna E. Shalala, Ph.D., during her keynote address at a Summit Meeting on aging today at The New York Academy of Medicine.

The meeting, entitled "Can My Eighties Be Like My Fifties?," united key players in the fields of social work and aging policy, who discussed the many issues impacting America's seniors and those soon-to-be. Shalala served for eight years as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Clinton and is now President of the University of Miami. She told the crowd of about 150 people that programs like Medicare and social security - devised in the 20th century - must be modernized to meet the changed demands of the 21st. Seniors are living longer, working longer, have fewer children to take care of them later in life than did past generations, and are finding themselves more often thrust into "unconventional" family arrangements, such as a grandmother raising her grandchildren.

"Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, I believe they are the three cylinders of the American dream," Shalala said in her address, entitled "We Must Age But We Don't Have to Grow Old." "We cannot give our seniors less security than they have now. We can't be afraid of expanding these programs."

Shalala helped to upgrade Medicare during her tenure at HHS by pushing for a host of new benefits, such as colonoscopy screenings and bone-density screenings. But the 37-year-old program is still gravely lacking in several critical arenas, she said. It does not provide benefits for long-term care. It does not offer a seamless transition from employer-based insurance to Medicare for retiring workers. It does not offer a prescription drug benefits, forcing seniors to endure financial hardship to afford the life-sustaining medications some need. The question of whether Medicare should pay for prescriptions, and to what extent, continues to be contentiously debated in Congress. "Medicare must pay for a drug benefit and must do it universally," Shalala said during her 40-minute address.

Today's middle-aged adults (tomorrow's seniors) will find their employers increasingly trying to shift health insurance costs to individuals during the next century, Shalala warned, thus depleting their retirement nest egg and weakening their financial security. She predicted that more and more corporate employers will offer only "defined contributions" to employees, meaning that they will give only a predetermined benefit amount and leave individuals to pay all other costs. (Most employers offer a health plan with guaranteed benefits for a percentage of all medical costs under the current system).

The new defined contributions approach is a frightening harbinger for Medicare, she said, since a weak employer-based health care system will lead to a weak post-employment situation. "The individual who is getting older, sicker, poor [will] pick up more costs," she said.

John Rother, the Policy and Strategy Director for AARP, spoke after Shalala about the priorities of his non-profit organization, which advocates for people 50 and older. Many of those in today's 65-and-older population are continuing to work because they can't otherwise make ends meet, Rother said. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening

John Rother, the Policy and Strategy Director for AARP.

among boomers. Of the roughly 78 million babies born between 1946 and about 1964 (the boomer generation), Rother said, one-fourth have a household income of only $6,000. "These are people who are nearing retirement and are completely unprepared," he said.

Rother urged seniors to be politically and civically active, to be informed and proactive health care consumers, and to discard the notion of 65-plus as "retirement" age. That should be replaced by an attitude that senior years constitute a "vital third age" in which education, exercise and community service can be emphasized.

Boomers are living in denial that they will soon be "seniors," Rother said. The first baby boomers will hit 65 in 2011 -only nine years from now. "Many of you when you receive that first invitation to join AARP, are like, 'who me?' " he said, eliciting hearty laughter from the audience.

The U.S. had 35 million people age 65 and older as of the 2000 Census, and as boomers age, that number is expected to double by 2030. The Academy has co-sponsored three invitational Summit Meetings in the past year to pinpoint boomers' future needs and ensure that those needs are reflected in graduate social work education. Patricia J. Volland, MBA, MSW, the Academy's Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration, and Nadine Gartrell, Ph.D., CSW, the Academy's Program Officer for Social Work projects, have been instrumental in organizing the conference. Volland is Principal Investigator with the Geriatric Practicum Partnership Program, a national effort to change graduate social work education so that more social work students pursue jobs working with older adults.

"We'll have the largest cohort of people turning 65 - the baby boomers - in 2011," Volland said. "We need to make sure we all grow older healthy and happy to the extent possible."

The conference was funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It was co-sponsored by the Academy's Social Work Fellows, the Brookdale Center on Aging of Hunter College, The International Longevity Center, Bronx VAMC Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, AARP, and the Consortium of New York Geriatric Education Centers. The New York Academy of Medicine is a non-profit institution founded in 1847 that is dedicated to enhancing the health of the public through research, education and advocacy, with a particular focus on disadvantaged urban populations.

Posted on October 25, 2002

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