The cost of growing old in the United States

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We hear a lot nowadays about the misery index and the happiness index. Government bureaucrats like to measure things, to quantify things, and to publish reams of statistics. Recently they decided to take a vast survey to determine what factors impinge on happiness and misery.

So they had sociologists prepare probing questionnaires. And researchers went all over the country interviewing all sorts of people-thousands of people.

They fed all the answers into a powerful computer. The computer digested this mass of data. Eagerly the bureaucrats awaited the printout that would give us new insights into the happiness/ misery index.

The printout appeared and presented to the world the conclusion gained from this multimillion dollar survey of the happiness factor. It was expressed in a single sentence. "It is better to be young, rich, and healthy-than old, poor, and sick."

Now that the government knows the disadvantages of being old, poor, and sick, we must ask what it is doing for this group of Americans who number in the millions and are increasing every day.

The answer is that they are keeping us alive-but little else.

The aged in capitalist America Under the capitalist work ethic people are supposed to provide for their retirement years by savings and private pension plans. Social Security was intended only to supplement the retirees' other income. But the majority of those who reach 65 have no other income.

They must live on an average social security income of less than $500 a month. Women, as usual, wind up with less income than men. Their earnings have usually been less. So their pensions are less.

Statistics say women outlive their husbands for an average of seven years. There are some low-rent housing units. But there are so few that thousands apply for every vacancy.

Lack of health care Health is an inevitable concern of the aged. There is a federal system called Medicare that the retired pay $17 a month for. But it pays only 80 percent of most costs. The rest comes out of the patient's pocket. In case of an operation and hospital stay, the patient can count on paying a minimum of $350 herself.

Worry over medical bills may break down the patient's health still further. So she winds up in a nursing home for long-term care.

Here is the ultimate financial disaster. Medicare does not pay for longterm nursing services. Now the patient is stripped of all her assets-her savings ii..i..

Leonard Freed owned. We can only guess how many aged have suffered this final insult to their dignity by an uncaring system that sees people only as objects for exploitation.

Old and young united I have painted a very gloomy picture of the plight of the aged. But actually the elderly are better off than younger victims of poverty. The elderly may have lived a good life-up to the point when they grow old. But a child who is deprived and even malnourished because of poverty will bear the scars for the rest of his or her life.

The elderly can at least claim the benefits they get as a right, not a charity. They are not told to take a low-paid job or harassed as the welfare mother is.

Most important, medical science has given us many more years of reasonable health. People in their sixties and seventies still have the energy to be aware, to be dissatisfied, and to do something about it. Thousands of retired people have joined the Gray Panthers, the Retired Peoples Congress, and other organizations that fight for the aged and disabled.

They don't fight only for the retired, but for all working people. A bus-load of retired longshoremen joined the picket line at Macy's here in San Francisco one day. I am sure the old longshoremen were rejuvenated as they walked the picket line and recalled their great battles 50 years ago.

The bosses want to put a wedge between the young and the old workers. Reagan tells young workers, "You are paying for old people's pensions-but you won't collect any yourselves."

He hopes to build sentiment for ending the Social Security system.

But he won't get away with this ploy. He won't be able to divide the young and the old. We all want the same things: affordable housing, a national health care system, nuclear disarmament, an end to war.

Today you will see many people in their sixties and seventies in antiwar marches. Recently an 80-year-old woman was put in jail for standing her ground in the face of a police assault.

The elderly today are a tough generation. A person who is 70 has lived through World War I, survived the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1919, made it through the Great Depression, endured World War II, and come up fighting through the years of McCarthyism.

Thousands of these people are ready to march beside their sons and daughters and grandchildren in the new battles for justice today. These new battles will culminate, I am confident, in a just, humane, socialist society.