Publicly available up-to-date stats about the older adult population is weak or non-existent. The most recent version of ChatGPT admits it cannot state the current population in the US that is aged 75+. Nor can Google. This is somewhat surprising, given the angst in business and market predictions about the aging of the US population and the potential doom that it portends. But anyway, the answer is buried in Census tables. Would you be surprised to learn that there are 25.7 million people aged 75+ today? That 14.8 million are women and 10.8 million are men? Would it surprise that 42% of the 65+ population (60.5 million) is aged 75+?
August, so warm, so replete with nursing home doomsayers and endless scam calls. You may be one of the dwindling population (34% are homeowners) who have landlines in the US (even digital phone-service based). You may feel like it is a waste, especially given the remarkably robust phone-scam industry populated in noisy call centers by reps who know nothing about the so-called Do Not Call list, and whose measurement must be based on getting you to pick up the phone again and again. Your relatives only text. Even your dentist and doctor prefer text. So why keep it? Maybe you run a business and need to call clients. Maybe you are legitimately afraid of not being found by emergency services (see below). Maybe you are an older adult living alone and just want to chat with someone. Here are the five blog posts from August:
It's news -- 600 nursing homes closed so what’s the strategy to fix? Rant on. You may have read a depressing article this morning in the Wall Street Journal about the number of people stuck in hospitals with no place to go because there are no nursing homes to take them – which is the status in the UK’s National Health System (NHS). That was an embarrassment in the UK – and this is a scandal in the US. It never should not have gotten to this point. So many factors crushed nursing homes -- Covid and Private Equity nursing home ownership were big players, followed by government strategy to undermine them. For 14 years, Florida banned new nursing home construction. The federal “Money Follows the Person” was introduced in 2005 to enable seniors to avoid them and receive Medicaid-paid services. Reauthorized repeatedly, it is now authorized through 2027.