Hello

As is becoming increasingly usual, I could not agree with you more. The current bill(s) lack the understanding and emphasis the aging population requires and deserves. Again we are left in the hands of the finance committee, the hair-splitters, the Alzheimer’s association and drug company lobbyists, the researchers, FOX news and commentators, the caregivers and the REPUBLICANS to decide for us what is the best way, what are the most appropriate means, how to define an aging brain (all aging brain) and the needs and wants of those who have one/will have one.

We are going somewhere (as opposed to nowhere) slow (as opposed to fast) towards acknowledging the impact of the bulge in our population’s age and needs for doing things for them that they cannot do for themselves (unless they are on one of the committees studying what to do, that is).

People with dementia were once again given token acknowledgment as sources of information and input as to what their own needs and wants are and how their government should respond to them. We will get a few more crumbs out of this year’s budget, and of course we will share them disproportionately with the researchers who are dedicated to curing something, some condition, some probable types of a disease that they themselves cannot define/discover its cause.
What an absurd world we continue in which to live. What a grand canyon there is between rhetoric, and budgets and services provided by governments.

I am now slightly optimistic about the future of reforming an under-performing, and over priced health care system. We have a President who cares, thinks and share his thinking with us, and is trying to respond to the multiple realities we have for so long ignored as a country, a people, a government, a taxpayer, a politician, a difference maker.

As I told my children when they were growing up and as they asked me a question the answer to which I didn’t yet have enough information to say yes or no, “We’ll see.”