Ragged Edge online has a good article on how the aging of the Baby Boom generation will impact disability rights and related issues. The wave of citizens entering their senior years will inevitably create a wave of citizens with health problems and disabilities, simply given the natural percentages at which older adults develop such conditions and the larger population size of older adults that will soon arise.

[T]here’s something not just big, but humongous, going on underneath the surface. The disability community is about to become a lot more central in American life.

Advocates know, but may not realize the significance of, this fact: the 76 million-member baby boom generation is rapidly aging. This year the leading edge turns 59. In just a few years, millions will reach retirement age. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of people aged 65-84 will go up 39 percent (by 13 million people). By 2010, there will be 34 million persons 65-84; ten years later, in 2020, there will be 47 million. . . .

As people get into their 60s and 70s, they become increasingly likely to develop heath conditions. Take hearing. . . . In the U.S. today, about 31 million people report some level of “trouble” with their hearing. That’s 15 percent of all Americans. Now, because hearing loss is most frequent among older persons, this group is set to explode. Today, among persons aged 65-74, 30 percent have a hearing loss. Of those 75 years of age or older, 46 percent have a hearing impairment.

What is happening is that the number of people in these age ranges is surging, simply because the 76 million baby boom generation is beginning to move through those age spans. By 2020, if those percentages hold (which they very likely will), there will be 40 percent more persons with hearing impairments in these age groups. It’s simple math.

The same thing is occurring with respect to vision impairments. Today, 19 million Americans of all ages report “trouble” with their sight. . . .By 2020, you will see 40 percent more in each age range having impairments of vision.

Or take mobility. . . . A total of 28 million of us have physical conditions of one kind or another. . . . That’s 6 percent of the population. Yet again . . . these numbers rise as people age. . . .

The fact that over the next several years tens of millions of older Americans will begin to have sensory and/or physical conditions is significant for a number of reasons. While not a lot will actually have disabilities, they will experience limitations. Accessibility issues will be, for these people, no longer “someone else’s problems” but rather “our concern”. Suddenly, they will have a personal interest in many of the same things we do.

And it’s well-known that seniors vote at a much higher rate than do people who are younger.

It all adds up to a steadily growing presence.

This trend will impact many facets of healthcare. Gerontology is already being touted as the boom specialty of the 2010s and 2020s; more and more “lifestyle” drugs and treatments are being developed to control the effects of aging; and, as the article points out, disabilities and age-related dysfunction will soon explode, and create an emerging market for treatments, as well as a large activist population.

The health-related issues that affect boomers will likely receive a great deal of political and commercial attention, given a large population, often described as self-absorbed, and not afraid to speak its mind. Issues that have been relatively ignored, such as disability, will see a lot more attention paid. Our understanding of what medicine is and does - the role of “cosmeceuticals” and lifestyle treatments in the pharmacopeia - will get a working-over. And the balance of needs and expenditure will surely skew.

Along with this, there is the danger of too much emphasis on certain needs. It is often remarked already that elderly voters receive disproportionate amounts of tax-supported benefits because of the political clout they wield. When as much as 25% of the country is eligible for AARP membership, that phenomenon can only become more prevalent. (On the other hand, when 20% of more of the country is eligible for Medicare - if there still is a Medicare - perhaps the wisdom of a single plan for the rest of the citizens will finally become apparent.)

This would not be a bad thing for those whose needs have not so far been met, especially for the disability community. If they can piggyback on the self-serving interests of formerly-able-bodied boomers, the rising tide of boomer entitlement may lift all those boats together. But this will also make it that much harder to adopt a rationally proportionate matching of healthcare expenditures to needs. And, like most issues related to the boomer generation shift, this one has not been planned for.

The stories of terminal patients euthanized at New Orleans hospitals because they could not be evacuated have gone through several evolutions. Original reports included interviews with un-named doctors who claimed - presumably plausibly enough to convince the reporters - that they had in fact provided terminal sedation to doomed patients. Bioethics.net now reports that those stories were hoaxes:

After investigating the story that patients were euthanized in the New Orleans nursing home, we discovered (as did several reporters) that the original source for the original story in a New Zealand newspaper was not a physician or healthcare worker at all but in fact a bystander whose story could not be corroborated and in fact who could not be found to give more detail. I’m guessing it was a hoax, in fact.

At the same time, the Louisiana Attorney General is still taking it seriously enough to order autopsies of all patients who died at one hospital where another doctor has now been quoted - on the record - as claiming that euthanasia was performed . . . by other doctors, not in his presence. I’m not sanguine about the ability of your typical Attorney General, especially from a conservative state, to make reasonable evaluations of such charges, and so the fact that claims have been made and an investigation has begun means little. The story itself is ambiguous:

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